Chapter 1

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Have you ever wondered to yourself, what happens when you die? It's a simple question, but it is one that has never been found out. We have so many ideas of where you go and yet none of them has been proven. Well I believe that when you die, you are left in a dark space to float forever. I can already hear some of you asking why I believe this and it's simple.

As of now I am dead, or at least that's what I think I am. I always knew that this day would come. But to think that the day would come so soon, it surprised me, and not many things could do that. You're probably wondering who I am right now and how I got here. My name is Angelus Sombra. I'm fifty-seven years old man, with grey, and dark hair, and brown eyes, and I'm 6'2. But what is most people don't know about me is that I'm a mercenary. I started at a very young age, ten I believe, I was just a brat on the streets with no discipline. Living off of whatever I steal, wearing whatever I could get my hands on, and nonstop fighting. Until I was offered a chance at life by an old man, the only bad side though is that other lives had to be taken. that's enough about my past for now, it will be a story for another time let me tell you how I got here.

Four hours ago

Abandon warehouse

“N-No, stay back. Stay back! Stay back!" The man begged as he slowly attempted to crawl away from me. I took my time getting to him, I was in no rush and he was not getting away, at least not with his broken knee. " Please I'll do anything, do you want money? I'll pay you three time the amount of who ever sent you here." The man offered as I walked closer to him. when I got close to him, I brought my leg up and slammed it on his good knee

CRACK

Hearing the sound of bones breaking made me flinch as he screamed, but now I had him in a position where I could manipulate him to tell me anything.

"You know buddy, I've seen a lot of people like you. People that like to act hard to others, but as soon as you put them in the right situation, they break down and cry." I said looking down at him, trying to intimidate him.

"What do you want" He said through gritted teeth. Going down on one knee while still standing on his still broken knee, I reached into my pocket and pulled out a picture of a man. The man in the picture seemed to be in his early fifties with brown facial hair, one brown eye, and the other covered with a white eye patch that had a symbol .

"The man in this picture, where is he" I said while I applied pressure on his knee. The man whose picture I was holding was Abram Abramovich, he's wanted internationally on multiple accounts of murder, rape, sex and arms trafficking, kidnapping, and many more, and the person I was 'questioning' was his one of his best men Victor Almyra "And before you pull the ' I don't know him' crap. I just want you to know that I have enough items in this warehouse to make you wish you were dead."

" I can't! he'll kill me if I tell you!" He cried, biting his lip hard enough to draw blood. I took my foot off of his knee and walked away. " What are you doing?" He asked as he watching me walk away. I knelled down to reach something, letting the item I picked up drag against the floor, and turned around to show him. It was a rusty pipe, the fear in his eyes as I walked back was indescribable.

" Victor, I want you to know right now-" I cut myself off as I slammed the pipe right next to his head " I'm willing to kill you. So you ether tell me where he is hiding, or I beat you with this pipe until these walls are painted with your blood." I said bringing the pipe to my shoulder.

"I-It's in my pocket." He sobbed, looking down to the ground. Bending down, I reached into his pocket and pulled out a slip of folded paper. Opening the paper I was greeted with coordinates.

" All this work, and the location was in you pocket." I said, turning to the exit. " If I were you, I'd try to find a safe location to lay low for awhile." I advised, I didn't get a response, but I still walked out, not caring whether I did or not.

Two hours later

After looking up the location of the coordinates, and changing into my hunting clothes I arrived at what appeared to be a abandoned, three story building in the center of a forest. Looking around the building I saw no guards on the the door, not wanting to risk taking the front door I tried to look for a different way in. Luckily I was able to find a open window on the second floor, their were multiple loose bricks on the building so scaling it was easy. When I got to the window I heard voices.

" If any one of them stop working, make them an example." I heard someone say, followed by the sound of a cocking gun. Looking up from the window I saw two men in black masks in front of me, one of them was armed with a assault riffle, and a handgun on the left, the other guard only had a handgun. The guard with the assault riffle nodded his head, and looked over a railing. I looked over the railings to and saw a large group of unhealthy, tired people packing weapons in black metal boxes. All of them looked like they were going to faint at any minute.

"Any idea when these guns are going to go out? I'm tired of looking after these people." The first guard said, letting the assault riffle hang over the railing.

" You don't have a choice." The second guard sighed, putting the gun in its holster, " The guns go out by the morning, the guns should be packed and ready to be loaded by the next hour. At least that's what I heard from the other guards." He explained, as he finished I begun to climb inside the building and unsheathed my knives

" Finally, I'll be out of here by tomorrow." He almost sang, not aware of what was about to happen to both of them. putting my left knife in a reverse grip, I slammed the knife into his neck.

"Wha-" Before the other guard could finish, I shoved my right knife through his chin, ending his life almost instantly. Taking both knives out of the bodies, I sheathed them. picking up the guards, I tossed them out the window I came from, along with the weapons they dropped.

I looked over the railings to see if anyone noticed, luckily no one did. looking around I saw three other guards, along with a door labeled 'STAIRS'. Making my way to the door I had no trouble, which I found suspicious, I expected a lot more guards to find me. As I was about to open the door, the door opened and I saw a the barrel of a pistol peek from the door. On instinct, I slammed the door on the hand, causing the gun to fall, I opened the door and was greeted by another masked face griping his left hand in pain. With his right hand he reached for his back and drew a knife, and tried to stab me in my head. I managed to get my hand under his wrist before he could get me and we stood there in a struggle for a few seconds before he tried to call for help.

"Hey! thr-" He tried to call before I chopped him in his throat, causing him to go into a coughing fit. I didn't give him the time to recover, I gave him a jab straight to the nose, I felt it break under my fist, before giving him a strong hook to his jaw, I finished him off by grabbing his shoulders and pulling him to the floor while bringing my knee, knocking him out cold. I went up the stairs at a fast pace, I had to find Abram before they discovered the body. I reached the top of the stairs and saw a door, I opened it slightly and I saw a guard a few feet away from the door. I closed the door and drew my knife before I knocked on the door.

" It's open!" The guard said through the door, I still knock. " It's open!" The guard repeated, starting to sound annoyed, but I still knocked. " Conner I swear if this is another one of your jokes I'm going to kill you." He said, sticking his head out the door, not noticing me. I saw a opening in his neck and I went for it. The knife went through his throat like butter, he tried to stop the blood from flowing from his neck, he looked right at me while the blood fell from his neck, before falling to the floor. I put a strong kick into the doorknob to break it off before I pulled him back into the hallway and left his body leaning on the door. I looked in both directions only to see long hallways on ether side. I didn't have a lot of time til the morning. The hallway to my right had a window that was open, I decided to move towards it. When I got to the window and noticed it looked wet, I thought that someone might have got into the building without the guards noticing. I looked down and saw foot prints, one of their shoes must have been wet, I followed the tracks until I reached the end of the hallway.

I peaked around the corner and saw a lot of door, but no guards, now I was really starting to get suspicious. I've seen birds nest with more security then what Abram had going on here, nothing seemed right. I continued to follow the footprints until I reached a black, wooden door, this time I was cautious, drawing my magnum instead of my knife. I slowly opened the door careful not to make to much noise.

When I opened the door, I saw Abram laying over a desk in a room that seemed to have alot of space. He was completely limp, I walked up to him and put my finger to his neck to feel for a pulse, he didn't have one.

"What the hell, you're already dead?" I said, I put my gun away and examined the body to see what killed him. He didn't have any holes in his body, so a gun is definitely out of the question. I lifted him up from the table and opened his mouth, he seemed to cough out blood before dying, as the inside of him moth was covered in blood.

"So you ate a poison, how?" I asked. Before I could keep looking around, I felt a sharp sting in my neck. I turned around and saw one of the gaurds, holding a needle in his hand. I tried to fight him by throwing a series of strikes. But every attack I through was ether dodged or parried, each one getting slower. He finally decided to attack me by giving me a solid back fist to the chin, causing me to fall down. I tried to get back up, but my body wasn't responding

"You won't be able to get up." The guard said, but I still kept trying.

"What the hell did you do to me?" I grunted, getting on my hands and knees.

"I've injected a heavy amount of Nero toxins inside you." He chuckled, and with his back turned to me, he pulled the mask off of his face. "Hey, do you recognize me?" He asked, turning around. He was a young man that was in his late twenties that had thick, brown hair, with eyes the same color, and a cocky grin on his face.

"Víbora." I said with venom in my voice. He was another mercenary like me, he specializes in assassinations with poisons being his favorite method of killing. I've worked with him for a few contract and wanted nothing more then to strangle the living fuck out of his cocky ass.

"Oh! So you do recognize me. That's fantastic!" He said in an up beat tone, like he just won a prize.

"What the fuck do you want." I said.

"Do you know that there is a contract that's willing to pay two million for your head on a platter?" He asked, walking the Abram's body and shoved it off of the chair it was on and took a seat. "With the money I'm going going to get from killing you, along with Abram. I won't need to take another contact for a few years." He laughed, drawing a pistol.

"You killed Abram?" I asked, now noticing how hard it was to stand up on my hands and knees.

"Yes!" He said, attaching a silencer to his pistol. "I poisoned his breakfast earlier. The idiot couldn't even tell than he was eating a Daphne jam instead of strawberry." He said, walking towards me and aimed the pistol at my head. "Let's end this small talk, it's really boring. Any words you want me to pass on?" He joked, my only response was me spitting at his shoes, before he unloaded the pistol on me.

Present

That's how I ended up dying, some cocky jackass got the jump on me before I could give him a good fight. Never got to follow the last rule did I? Whatever, nothing that I can do about it now. I began to look back on my entire life, all the fights that I got in when I was still on the street, the training that nearly killed me, my first solo contract.

"I really never got away from the violence, did I?" I grumbled, ironically, violence was the very thing that I tried to get away from. But there was too much in the world, to the point where to get away you'd have to be completely isolated from the world or try to cleanse what you can. And I was stupid enough to do the second choice.

I sighed at all I did to try to help, if I was being honest, I knew it was a bad choice in my early thirties. But by that time, I had so many people after me that I couldn't just up and leave, I had to take care of them first. Abram was the last person that was after me (or so I thought). "Looks like I won't have to worry about them anymore." I chuckled, "What would I give for a second chance?" I said randomly, it was mostly because of the moment that made me ask that.

I suddenly felt my arm be grabbed and pulled, I immediately reacted and tried to attack what ever had me. But I only saw a tar like sludge around my arm, I tried to pull my arm away, but it wouldn't budge. I grabbed my knife and began to hack at it, but all it did was dull the edge of my knife. The sludge slowly made it's way to my shoulder and soon enough, my chest. It wasn't long before it got all of my body, I didn't know what this thing was doing. But whatever it was doing, it hurt, a lot. It felt as if it was breaking every bone in my body, and crushing my organs. When It covered my face I pasted out from the pain.

Location: Everfree Forest

My eyes shot open, but were immediately blurred by the water that surrounded me. I flailed around to see which way was up, I saw a light and swam towards it. When I reached the surface, I went to the edge of the pond and coughed my lungs out. I looked up and saw a row of large trees. I got out of the water and took deep breaths. I stood up and tried to step forward, but instead fell forward. I laid down for awhile, and shivered as a strong gust of wind. After five minutes I was able to sit up and look around.

" Where the hell am I?" I asked, looking around. That did little to nothing, as all I could see was rows of trees. I shivered once again as another strong breeze past me. 'I've got to let my clothes dry.' I thought, where ever I was it was really windy. And when you're stuck in a windy forest cold, with no medication for god know how many miles. The last thing you want to be is sick. luckily for me, there was a rock on the other side of the pond that had sunlight on it. Before I headed towards it, I noticed that something was missing, I looked down and saw that my cloak was missing. I looked towards the pond and saw it floating close to the edge. leaning towards the edge, I grabbed my cloak and wronged it. Getting as much water as I can out. I took my mask off as well and looked at it for any damage, besides a small dent, it was fine. I look to my reflection in the pond and gasped in shock.

In the pond was not me, it instead showed me a young man. The young man had rather messy black hair that almost reaches down to his shoulders, along with some strands pointing upwards on top of his head and a prominent tuft obscuring most of his forehead. He had red eyes with slit pupils similar to that of a snake's. He was wearing the same clothes that I was, except smaller. I recognized the young man that was staring back at me, it was me when I was fifteen. I couldn't believe that it was me, but everything except the eyes were exactly the same. I brought a hand to my face, the teen in the pond mimicked my actions.

'What happened to me?' I wondered, I tried to remember the events that led up to this moment. 'I remember being stuck on a void, thinking about all that happened in my life, and then that tar got me.' I recalled, before I had an idea of what did this to me. 'The tar! Maybe that's what did this to me.' I concluded, it was the only logical answer I could come up with. And that's if there is any logic behind this.

I began walking towards the rock, still trying to see how I even ended up in that pond. Teleporting was impossible, but then again I was in a void and attacked by that tar and I'm in my fifteen year old body, so maybe that wasn't so far fetched. When I reached the rock, I began to strip and lay my clothes to dry. " And now we wait." I said to myself, and began to examine all of my gear, and analyze what happened to me.

Thirty minutes later

After waiting a short while, my cloths were finally dry and ready to be worn again, except my mask, to which I clipped to my side. My boots were moist, but I didn't worry about that, Instead I tried to figure out where to go. I looked at the sun, it was starting to set.

"I've got to find a town soon." I told myself, not wanting to be out when it was dark. And with that I set off to the east. I know that it wasn't a good idea just to go in a random direction, but I didn't have much of a choice.

It seemed fortune was finally on my side, as after walking for a mile I was greeted with a path of dirt, there wasn't only one path though, there were three. Each one lead to a different direction, but I didn't know where. I walked to the center of the the three paths and tried to figure out which path to take. That was before I saw the sign that was barley readable with the aging paint, and chipped wood.

Ponyville

six miles away

That was all that I could make out of the sign. The name made me chuckle, it sounded like the name was ripped right out of a kids T.V. show. I decided to go down this path as it was my best chance at reaching a town.

'I've never heard of a town know as 'Ponyville'.' I thought to myself, thinking about all the places that "Ponyville" could be in. As I continued down the path, I looked ahead and saw four children; one boy, and three girls. They seemed to be having a nice walk in the fore-

"Wait, are they being chased?" I asked to myself, The kids looked like they were sprinting as if the devil was on their heels. Their pursuers showed up a second later, and to say that I was surprised was an under statement. Following them could only be described as three large wooden wolfs. their green eyes focused on the children, closing the distance with every bark and snarl that they through at them. The same went for me, as the distance was closing quickly and I was conflicted. On one hand, I could easily jump to the side and hide in a bush, all I would have to do is wait for them to pass and I would be safe. On the other hand, I could try to fight these things off and let them get away, but risk myself in the process. I didn't know what these things could do, not only that but I was now younger, so my mind was going towards the second option, but they are just kids, and I couldn't just let them die. With my mind made up, I looked up into the sky and said this.

"I better get a one-way ticket to the afterlife up there." And with that, I set off the face the wooden canidaes.

Spikes P.O.V

If I were to describe the experience I was having in one emotion, it would be terror. Right now, I was running from a pack of timber wolves along with the C.M.C., only Celestia knows how long we have been running for.

"Why did I let you girls talk me in to this?" I scream while running from the series of snarls and barks behind us, each one growing louder and louder.

" We said we were sorry already." Applebloom said doing the same activity as me.

"Sorry isn't going to get rid of the wolves behind us." I yell, we continued to run, until we saw a guy walking towards us . "Run away!" I yelled to him, he seemed to have not heard me as he was still walking forward. We got closer to him once again I warned him. "Run, there are timber wolves behind us." I told him, grabbing his arm and pulling him the opposite direction, he look at the wolves and sighed.

"Go on, I'll take care of them." He said, walking towards the wolves.

"Are you insane, those things will eat you alive." Sweetie belle said, her voice cracking

"Well, I'm facing wooden wolves that I've never seen before to save kids I don't know. So maybe I am a little insane." He deadpanned. We just stood there, shocked at what he just said. The guy that was maybe a few years older then us, was going to take three large timber wolves head on. I then saw the first wolf lunge at him and what we saw made our jaws drop. In a matter of seconds, he drew one of the two knifes from his back and slammed it into the wolf head and went into a kneeling position, making the head along with the entire body hit the ground with enough force to lift dust into the the air. The wolf that was stuck under the knife was still alive and tried to get up, but before it could, he ripped the knife from the head to the nose, effectively killing it.

The second wolf went to lunge at him while he was still kneeling, but he didn't let the wolf have the advantage. He grabbed the wolf's head mid jump and using the wolf's momentum against it, he rolled backwards while putting his foot on its abdomen and when he came back up he was straddling the wolf. The wolf tried to fight him off, but the best he got was a scratch on his forearm, before he shoved the knife into the wolf's eye and twisted it to dig further into its head. Another one dead, and he did this with just a knife while everyone I knew had to run to the safety of the town.

The last wolf didn't wait for him to recover and jumped right on top of him. The wolf immediately tried to take chunks out of him by biting at his head, the only thing preventing that was the guys foot on its chest. It looks like he finally decided to use his knife, as he drew the other knife and stab the wolf under it's jaw. That didn't stop it as it kept barking and biting at him, putting his other knife to use, he stabbed it on top of its muzzle, clamping its jaw shut. The guy pulled the head of the wolf toward his body, and the body away. After a solid minute of pulling and pushing, the head of the wolf was brutally torn away from its body, while the body was pushed in the other direction, the sap of the wolf poured on his face. Taking his knives out of head the guy got up, taking heavy breaths and sap covering his face, and walked towards us. We were on our butts by this, as watching what happened in front of us caused or legs to weaken. When he got close to us, he asked us one thing.

"Why didn't you guys run?"

Chapter 2

View Online

I don't know how to feel right now, how should I feel? I just tore a wooden wolf's head away from its body, how many people can say that they did that in their lives. Back to the matter at hand, I tore my knives out and rolled over to get up. when I got up I felt my leg cramp up, I ignored it and looked up. I felt my eye's widen when I saw the the same kids on their asses.

'Why are they still here?' I questioned in my mind, you'd think that they would be far enough to reach that sign that lead me in this direction. I walked to them, panting with hungry breaths and covered in whatever that wolf bleed, my body isn't fit enough to handle that amount of endurance.

"Why didn't you guys run?" I questioned in between breaths, they seemed to be out of breath themselves as they didn't answer the question immediately. "Hey can you all hear me?" I asked kneeling down and wiping the 'blood' off my face. They seemed to have heard me this time and nodded their heads simultaneously.

I nodded as well and offered them my hand, the one without the blood, to help them all up. The first one that took it was a boy with messy green hair, he was wearing a purple, unzipped jacket along with a light green shirt. He was wearing cargo pants the same color as the jacket, there were tears on some areas of the pants, his shoes were purple and look like it had a scales .

The next kid I helped up was a girl with long, bright, red hair with a pink bow on her head. she was wearing a blue, short-sleeved jacket with a red shirt underneath. Her legs were covered with a pair of brown shorts, and on her feet were red boot that went up to her mid calf.

The next one was also a girl, but her hair looked like a mess of pink and purple. she was wearing a simple light blue sweater with tears in the arm, and a black skirt and some purple flats. a fairly simple look for someone with hair like that. And the last one was a girl that looked like a tomboy with short, purple hair. She was wearing a black sweater with a flaming wheel on it. Her lower half was covered with a pair of blue jeans, and she had black running shoes on her feet.

All of them were sweaty and covered in dirt, most likely because they were running from the wolfs. When all of them were off of the ground I didn't waste any time and turned and started to walk down the path, not wanting to question them any longer if they were only going to gawk.

"W-Wait!" I heard the boy in the group call and heard him along with the others jog towards me, I didn't stop but I did slow down enough for them to catch up. They walked right beside me along the path, stepping around the wolves broken bodies. "Who are you?" The boy asked. I raised an brow.

"You know you're supposed to introduce yourself before asking for someone for theirs." I stated, bending down and rubbing my hands in the dirt to get rid of the wolf's blood. I saw him and the others fluster for a bit, before shaking their heads and answered.

"I'm Spike." the kid in the purple jacket said, I nodded, the next one stepped up

"Applebloom." The red head said, I stopped rubbing my hand when she said her name. Before I could question it the next one talked.

"My name is Sweetie Belle." The multi-haired girl introduced, I looked at her as if she grow another head. The last one stepped up before he could ask.

"Scootaloo." the tomboy introduced confidently, I finally got my chance to talk.

"Are you all using a nickname or something?" I asked, pointing at the the girls and ignoring the boy. His name was at least normal, these three sounded as if they named themselves. They looked confused at me with confused eyes, before shaking their heads. "Those are your actual names?" This time the girls nodded, I brought my hands to my face, which was still sticky. Some of what was on my face got into my mouth, is this sap?

"Are ya' alright mister." Applebloom asked, concern in her eyes, I only nodded my head and kept walking forward.

"Wait a second man, you still haven't told us your name." Scootaloo said, pointing her finger at me accusingly at me. They looked at me expectantly, I rolled my eyes to this.

"Sombra." I said, deciding to only give my last name. They stopped in their track, and their eyes seemed to have widen when I said my name. "Did I say something?" I asked looking back a them, they looked at each other nervously before looking at me.

"N-Nothing." Spike said, walking forward along with the girls. I didn't believe his answer, it was almost as if he didn't even try to hide it, but I decided not to point it out and walked right next to them.

"Alright then." I shrugged, we walked for awhile in silence. I used this time to see if I could get any information in where I am. "Hey can I ask you guys some questions?" I asked, once again, they looked to each other, Scootaloo got a mischievous grin.

"Does that count as one?" She said, her friends rolled their eyes along with me.

"Good joke kid, how long have you been waiting to use that one?" I shot back, she looked at me as if I actually shot her.

"One week." She mumbled, I actually felt bad for the kid. I reached out for her and rubbed her messy head.

"Only a joke kid don't take it personal." She didn't seem to appreciate me rubbing her head and showed that by shewing my hand away and crossing her arms. I laughed at her little show, before I could say something else sweetie belle spoke.

"Okay, we'll answer you're questions," She started, but I felt that there would be a 'but' in there. "but you have to answer ours." there it is.

"Fair enough." I shrugged, "You guys have any idea where we are, as well as the country and planet?" I asked, they all nodded.

"You're in the Everfree Forest, in Equestria. the planet is named Equis" Applebloom answered, confusion present in her eyes. I tried to act normal on the outside, but the inside of my head was working in overdrive.

'Okay, so right now I'm in a forest and a country that I had no Idea existed. What should I ask about next? Has anyone heard of a place called America?' I thought, combing my finger through my hair. I was so focused on what I should do that I didn't hear the question that was directed at me.

"Hey did you hear me?" I heard the tomboy ask, breaking my thought, I looked to her.

"Sorry, what was that?" I asked, Scootaloo rolled her eyes.

"I asked where'd you learn to fight like that?" She repeated, pointing down the path. I saw nothing when I looked down it, but I assumed that she was pointing at the wolves. "It was like those fights that you would see in a comic book." she added, eyes glowing with anticipation

"Oh yeah, we've been wondering that to." Sweetie Belle said, putting her finger to her chin and looked up to the trees. "We don't know many people that would take on a pack of timber wolves. My sister and her friends can alone, but only with their exalted weapons or magic." she explained. I perked up when she said magic.

"Magic?" I asked to no one in particular, but sweetie Belle seemed to have heard as she nodded.

"Yeah, magic. You haven't heard of magic?" She asked, tilting her head to the side.

"No, we don't use magic where I come from." I explained.

"What?!" she yelped, voice cracking. "You guys don't use magic where you come from? Where do you come from?"

"I come from a place called America, it's really far away so I doubt that you even heard of it." I said, they seemed muddled by what I just told them.

"Yeah, we never heard of such a place. I should probably ask Twilight about it." Spike wondered aloud.

"You don't need to do that." I said. "It's not really important right now." I said, trying to turn the subject away from what it was,I looked to Scootaloo. "So you asked where I learned to fight the way I did." I said, she nodded her head. "Well it's a really long story, one that we might not have time for. But long story short, when I was ten or so, I was living on the street. I had no one to take care of me and it was really tough. But I happened to be really fortunate one day, as a old man came up to me and asked me if I wanted to really live like this and gave me a offer. I accepted it and next thing I now, I'm fighting grown adults and training from dawn til midnight." I told, leaving out the parts about becoming a mercenary. They all seemed interested in the story, but I stopped it there.

"That's it?" Scootaloo ask, disappointed. "That's all you're going to tell us."

"Like I said, the story is long, so I shortened it." I explained, adding a shrug to the end. "Now my turn for a question." I looked towards Sweetie Belle. "You said something about exalted weapons, what are those?" She scratched her head.

"Well, I don't know how to really explain it." she said, closing her eyes and humming. "Rarity said that a it had something to do when someone is able to conjure the magical energy that is inside everyone and forge it to become a weapon that is unique to only them." she explained. the others nodded along with her.

"I have a question." Applebloom called, finally deciding to speak up. "What's your cutie mark." She asked, pointing to my gloved hands.

"Cutie mark? You mean my birth mark?" I asked, she shook her head. "What's a cutie mark?" I saw her eye's widen when the words left my mouth.

"You don't know what a cutie mark is?"

"If I did, I wouldn't be asking." I retorted, She blushed in embarrassment

"What else don't you know?" I heard Scootaloo mumble

'Well I'm sorry that I come from another planet that doesn't have magic, exulted weapons, or cutie mark. I almost said out loud, but I kept my lips clamped.

"A cutie mark is a mark that appears on on the body, usually the back of the hands, when they discover their talent and the cutie mark show that talent." she explained.

"Do you all have one?" I asked, They shook there heads.

"No we're still trying to find ours." She said, I looked towards spike.

"I'm different, I don't get a cutie mark." He shrugged, I didn't question any further.

"Well I doubt that I have one." I said, taking of the glove from my right hand. "See nothing." I said, showing them my blank backhand.

"What about the other hand." Scootaloo asked, I rolled my eyes, but still removed the glove and showed them my hand, I saw their eyes squint as they looked at my hand.

"See, it's bla-"

"What kind of symbol is that?" Scootaloo said, my eyes widened and I flipped my had around. She was right, there was indeed a symbol on the back of my hand. It was a symbol that I recognized back on Earth.

'What the hell! That certainly wasn't there before.' I thought in surprise, gripping my wrist and inspecting the symbol.

"Hey, do you know what that symbol means Sombra." I heard Spike say, he hesitated with my name.

"Yeah, it's an old symbol where I come from that represents a hunter or something like that." I explained, still eyeing the mark.

"Oh, so does that mean you're a hunter." Sweetie Belle asked.

"I don't know, maybe." I looked ahead and saw the end of the forest. "Well it looks like we'll reach the end of the forest soon." I said, putting my gloves back on. When we got out of the forest, I saw a village that looked like it belonged in the mid-ages. I looked to the side of the entrance and saw what looked like a cottage surrounded by various animals. I decided not to pay too much attention to it. "So do you guys feel like walking to the village together?" I asked, putting my hands in my pocket. They looked to each other, sending a telepathic message to each other before deciding.

"No thanks, well stay here. we need to do some thing before we go." Applebloom said, I shrugged my shoulders.

"Suite yourselves." I said, and with that, I walked down the path to this 'Ponyvile' and hopefully try to get more information on where I am.

(Spike's P.O.V)

We watched as the guy who saved us, Sombra, walked to Ponyvile. We didn't know weather we should feel relived or scared.

"What do we do guys?" Applebloom asked in a uneven voice. "Should we tell them about Sombra?" We looked at each other as if our eyes held the answer we were looking for.

"I think we should." Scootaloo said. "He doesn't seem to be much, but he also did kill three grown timber wolf. And his name, he's named after the shadow mage himself." She pointed out, We all nodded.

"Alright, I'll tell Twilight and see what happens from there." I said, we all nodded once again and made our way down the path. But we all immediately stopped as we saw all the girls sprinting down the path, and none of them looked happy. When they stopped in front of us, I asked one question "We're all in trouble aren't we?" They all nodded, I gulped, along with the girls.

Chapter 3

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"Whoa!" I yelped, jumping out of the way of a group of girls. I watched as they had sprinted pass, running up until they had reached the kids. When they had reached them, the look that the kids had could only be described as pure regret, and the girls had then proceeded to verbally tear their ears off. "They must know them." I shrugged, continuing to make my way to the village known as ponyville, chuckling once again.

When I had reached the town, I found myself to be in some sort of market place. I had observed everything that I could without looking suspicious. In the short time that I had walked, I notice three things. One of the things that I had observed is that this town's community was very lively. everyone in the town had a smile on their face and was socializing with one another. the next thing that I noticed was that these people had a much different form of currency than the one that I had on hand. They had seemed to be golden coins with a horseshoe in the center of it. Luckily, figuring out how much one of these coins was worth did not seem difficult as there only seemed to be the gold coin. The last thing that I had noticed had caught my attention more than the other two.

'Why are there so many damn women!?' I mentally screamed, for every ten women that I had counted, there would be one man that I would almost miss. It was obvious that the women of this town had heavily outnumbered the men here. It may be just me being affected by all my raging teenage hormones (won't that be exciting to experience again) but none of the women around here had a single flaw on them. sure there were some that looked better than others, but still, what the hell. 'Do everyone of them use the same beauty products?' I shook my head and pinched my thigh to rid my hormone-induced thoughts.

"Stay focused," I said to myself walking to a part of town that seemed less busy than the market. This part of the town did still have people, but it was not overcrowded like the market. As I walked along the dirt road, I had established that the first thing I would need to get was money. Money would be very important in the future if I was going to feed myself and find somewhere to stay. Sure I could try to stay in the woods and try to rough it out and hunt for food. The only problem was that I had no idea what was in those woods, seeing as there are now such things as timber wolves. So staying in the town was going to be my best option. This again would lead to the fact that I have nothing, the fact that my stomach was growling loudly didn't help at all. As I tried to soothe my stomach from its aching pain, I bumped into someone head to head by mistake, knocking them down flat. I rubbed my head and looked down and saw that I had bumped into a teenage boy, maybe two years older than this body, he had looked up at me with something that seemed to be anger. I put my hand towards him to help him up.

"Sorry about that man, you alr-" before I could finish my sentence, I felt my arm being pulled along with my shirt, before I was slammed against the wall, catching everyone's attention. I looked up and saw another teen the same age as the other with the same look on his face as the one on the floor. It wasn't until I looked around that I noticed that I didn't bump into just one teenager, I had bumped into a group of teenagers, five to be exact.

"What the hells your problem man." The teen who was holding me said, he was a pale boy wearing a black leather jacket over a dirty, white shirt, with tight, black leather pants. His most prominent feature had to be his hair, which happened to be a spiked Mohawk dyed red. "You think you can walk into one of our boys and walk away again."I used my one free hand to move his hand away from my throat.

"I didn't see you all walking." I said after a quick breath.

"You didn't see this big ass group in front of you." He motioned to the other four boys, apparently thinking there was fourteen behind him. I shook my head, which seemed to further anger the boy. "I swear, dumbasses like you should learn to stay out of a Dimond dog's way when they're walking down the street." The boys behind him seemed to agree with him, and the people around us put their heads down. But I didn't care about that, I ignored all of that.

'What did he call me' I thought to myself, the last person that had insulted me had been made an example of. That being me beating said person into a bloody pulp and left hanging nude in front of all his men. That was thirty-five years ago when I was twenty-two when I had been very weak to insults, probably would have been worse if I clung on to my days on the streets. As I got older I had grown thicker skin, but I'm back to fifteen, and that insult had triggered more emotions now than I had in thirty years. I had reached for my knife, almost instinctively.

"Yes, let the anger take over."I heard a voice say, the voice was one I've never heard, yet sounded so familiar. But just as my hand had touched the hilt, I had quickly stopped myself.

No, you can't go killing someone on your first day here, no matter how tempting. plus, I wanted to do something that would hurt him badly. Not in a physical way, but in a way much worse.

"Honestly you're right, I must be a dumbass to not have moved out of your way." I said loudly, making everyone watching jump in surprise, and the boy who was holding me to put on a cocky smirk.

"Damn right you are, maybe you'll look ne-"

"I mean, with hair like that, I'm surprised I didn't move out your way the moment you walked into this street." I finished, he didn't seem to catch what I said, stopping his sentence entirely to confirm what I said. But the people laughing around us had been all the confirmation that he needed. His face had turned red, from either anger or embarrassment.

"You want to say that again dickhead." He said in a low growl, tightening his grip on my collar.

"I'm just stating the obvious." I shrugged, letting the insult fly over my head. "That hair of yours is what makes up most of your height. I'm actually glad that I bumped into your friend instead of you. If I had, I'd be dead on the spot." The people around us just couldn't stop laughing, and I couldn't stop smirking.

"Your a real funny guy, you know that." He chucked, but it was not because he thought it was funny.

"You're looking a little red there buddy," I said innocently. "Maybe your pants are keeping your blood from circulating." I was surprised at this point, I would have expected him to reach his breaking point by now. But it was close, I could see it was.

"You must want to die today." He said getting close, desperately trying to save face from this humiliation.

"If you're going to kill me, do it fast, your breath is already doing half the job for you," I said, turning my head to the side. I was genuinely afraid of what these guys breathe was doing to my nose. "Man dude, never in my life had I breathed so clearly from my nose before. You ever try breathing through your goddamn nose, it might do the world a favor." It was then that he had reached his breaking point.

"THAT'S IT." The boy screamed as he raised his fist and hurled it at me. I'm an experienced mercenary who's been in more fights then I could remember. And with all that time came experience, I had enough to where anyone who wasn't trained well tried to hit me it would look slow. But this kids punch may as well be going at a snail's pace. Before I could react to his attack the fist had been caught in a gloved hand that was many times larger.

"Ah' think you boys had yer fun." I male voice said, we had both looked to see who it was, we had to look up a few inches but we saw him.

He was tall, maybe six foot four, he had dirty blonde hair and green eyes. He was wearing a red, short-sleeved flannel with s green apple design on it. His pants were faded blue with dust stains on it, and on his feet were dark brown work boot. In his mouth, he was chewing on some plant.

"B-Big Mac." The boy stuttered, seeming to know this character well. The boy had backed away from Big Mac and looked to the other guys. They seemed to know that they would be outmatched by this one guy.

"Let's get out of here." One of the teens said, the others seemed to agree and walked a different direction. But not after sending me a glare, promising to be back for me.

When they had turned the corner, I had to look up to Big Mac.

"I guess I should thank you for helping me out there," I said, referring back to what happened a second ago. He didn't answer, he only played the plant in his mouth and stared. "Thank you for that." I thanked, feeling somewhat uncomfortable, I wasn't above thanking people for helping me, but it wasn't really my element.

"Your welcome." He said in a deep voice. "You okay, you got slammed pretty hard?" He asked.

"Yeah I'm fine," I answered rubbing my back. Which was weird, the wall I was slammed to look like popcorn ceiling. So me being slammed into it should really hurt.

"You should be careful when it ,comes to the diamond dogs." He advised me, probably for the future.

"Oh please, I saw you smiling in the corner." I laughed, it was weird. I don't remember the last time I acted like this. It must be this new body, along with the environment. "Who are they anyway?" He raised an eyebrow. "I'm not from around here, so I don't know." He nodded in understanding

"The Dimond Dogs are a large gang that showed up about three years ago, they somewhat indirectly control this town." He explained with a sigh at the end.

"You ever try to get the authority's on them?" He nodded his head.

"We tried to get the princess's to get their guards on them. But they always manage to get away. They stopped for a couple of months but they came back."

"Where do they hide, this town doesn't seem big enough to hide a large gang?" I asked following him as he walked.

"They don't hide in town, they hide in an underground in a mound outside of town." He said before we stopped at a carriage. In the back of the carriage were two bushels of apples. The horse pulling the was a brown horse with a black mane. Big Mac had hopped on the carriage and was about ready to take off before I stopped him.

"Hey before you take off, do you know anywhere with some good food?" I asked holding up a pouch. I looked inside and it seemed there where multiple gems inside, ruby's, sapphires, emeralds, they were all in this bag. One of the useful things that I learned was on the street was to pickpocket. It had been very helpful to me and it still is. I had taken it from the boy that was holding me on the wall when he wasn't paying attention. Mac nodded and held a hand towards me.

"Yeah, hop on." He said.

"Is it going to disturb you?" I asked. He shook his head.

"Nope." He said, I shrugged and took his hand, and with one strong pull, I was up. It had taken at least five minutes to reach what Mac called 'Sugarcube Coner'. To describe it in very simple terms, it was a big gingerbread house. That's it, that's all it was. And I didn't even react to it, I could. On the way here I had seen some girl flying with transparent wing fly up and touch move a cloud. Not only that but after jumping on it a few times, she had forced it to rain over a flower pot, the woman she did it for smiled and thanked her like she did not just do the impossible. It had taken all my willpower to not jump up and scream how to see was able to do that. So seeing a big gingerbread house did nothing to me. Mac had said that this was a bakery that had very good pastries.

"So I'm guessing that you're here to deliver the apples to them," I said, glancing back to the bushels of apples. He nodded.

"The Cakes had got a large order for apple turnovers, but they had run out of apples halfway through the order." The Cakes, as he explained, are the owners of Sugarcube Corner. They were kind people, maybe a little too kind, as Mac said that if someone didn't have money to pay for something they would give them something from the batch they would throw away. No one's taken advantage of them yet but who am I to judge.

"Need help with that?" I asked as he moved to the back. He seemed hesitant as he drew one of the bushels towards himself.

"Sure." He shrugged, giving me the bushel. He had taken the other one and we had both walked into the bakery. The interior was very simple compared to the exterior. There were booths and tables set up around with posters of pastries that they were selling.

"Oh, Big Mac!" A woman called I had turned and saw a woman with a...uniqe.. hairstyle that resembles frosting. She was wearing a simple yellow dress, with a blue apron over it. The apron had been dirty from frosting and flour, showing that she had been working for a while. Something was weird though. Her eyes, which were a brilliant rose, were red and puffy, and her smile, it seemed like it was forced on.

"Evenin' Mrs. Cake." He greeted. "Where should we put these apples?"

"Oh just put them in the kitchen." She said. We had both walked past her and put placed the apples on the counter, before walking out.

"Who's this young man Big Mac?" She asked I had looked back, before realizing that she was talking to me. Mac had opened his mouth to answer, only to widen his eyes in realization.

"You know what? I don't even know his name." He stated, and they had both looked at me.

"I guess that I've never introduced myself huh," I said. "my name is Sombra." I introduced, sticking my hand out. And then it happened again, both of them took up shocked expressions and blinked a couple of times. After a second, Mac had reached out and shook my hand.

"Big McIntosh, most people call me Big Mac though." He said, giving me a firm handshake, I then turned to Mrs. Cake.

"My name is Cup Cake dear." She said, also taking my hand before turn to Mac. "So how much do I owe you for the apples?" She asked, but she looked like she didn't want to hear the answer.

"It'll be 130 bits for the apples." He answered before she had flinched.

"Okay, I'll go get the money." She said before going to the back. I had got curious about why she reacted the way she did and looked around the bakery. It didn't take long to see what was wrong.

"What the hell?" I somewhat yelled. Catching the attention of Big Mac.

"What's wron-" He started, before seeing what I saw. In this room where there should have been tables for people to sit at, was splinters of what I assumed to be tables, in some parts of the walls there were holes, posters had been torn to shreds, there was even a broken window, this place had obviously been attacked. The tables and chairs that I saw when I walked in must have been the ones they were left alone.

"Okay here's the mone-"

"Mrs. Cake, what happened?" Big Mac asked, voice filled with concern and worry. Mrs. Cake's eyes widened.

"It's nothing you need to worry about, it's our problem." She mumbled, putting the money in Big Mac's hand. But he wasn't taking it.

"Who did this Mrs. Cake?" He repeated. He had kept asking her until she had finally decided to tell what had happened.

"It was the Dimond Dogs." She answered.

"Why would they do this?" He asked, pointing to the damage.

"They had been coming in here every week for a month. They would make us give them food and would leave without paying. They came in again today asking for more food. I said that I wouldn't give them any food until they had paid for what they had owed." She explained, but then she had started to break into sobs. "Then they had went into the dining area and *sniff* They went crazy. We wanted to stop them, Mr. Cake tried, but they had hit him with a chair. We hide upstairs with the twins to keep them safe. " She then broke down, it wasn't hard to figure out the rest. Mac them went up and held her by the shoulders, and I stood beside her.

"Where's Mr. Cake right now?" He asked urgently.

"He's at the hospital now, they had hurt him badly, but the medics told me he should be fine." She said in between sobs. Mac had looked relieved for a moment, before his face quickly filled with anger.

"Those dirty, good for nothing sons of bitch. Once I get my hands on them I'm gonna-" He growled before I put my hand on his shoulder.

"I know your angry McIntosh, but this is not the place for you to be angry," I said, trying to calm him down, it seemed to work as he took deep breaths. "Mrs. Cake, is there anyone that you know that can help you in this situation?" I asked, see what I can do to help the situation. She shook her head.

"No, there's no one, we have to pay for this with our own money. And with not only the repairs but the medical bills as well. We just can't afford any of it." She sobbed once again. Mac had looked at her with sorrow and so did I, I had seen things like this happen. These people had done nothing wrong, they were kind to people and asked for nothing in return and yet, they had received the short end of the stick. And these people had children. If this place went out of business because of damages, they would have nothing to support them. No parent wanted to lose their child. I had sighed and reached towards my back.

"Will this help?" I sighed, holding the pouch I stole earlier in front of her. She had stopped crying for a second and grabbed the pouch. She undid the string and opened it when she what was inside she gasped and dropped the bag, which I had caught before it touched the ground.

"I-I can't take those." She said, in which I raised a brow.

"Why not?" I asked, holding the bag on in front of her.

"It's too much, I just met you, I can't take this from you."

"But you're not taking it from me, Mrs. Cake, I'm giving it to you," I said. "Besides it's too much for me, I wouldn't know what to use all of these for. So you take it." Not like it's really coming out of my pocket anyway.

She looked like she couldn't believe what was happening, this teenage boy that she had just meet after her husband was hospital and bakery destroyed, was giving her the money to pay for it all. Even now as she held the bag of gems in her hand, she still thought that it would disappear at any second.

"Thank you." She mumbled.

"What was that?" I asked, not catching what she said. She then jumped up and hugged me into her chest.

"I can't thank you enough for this!" She cried, but instead of crying tears of sadness, they were tears of joy. "Thank you, thank you, thank you." She had continued to whisper. I hugged back awkwardly.

"Your welcome." I said it was just as awkward as the hug I was giving. But she didn't care as she continued to hug me. After two minutes of hugging, we separated, she still had tears in her face, but through the tears was a beautiful smile. But the moment was interrupted by a loud growl. This leads me to blush, but her to smile.

"You must be hungry if your stomach is growling like that." She said, wiping away the tears, before turning to the kitchen. "Let me see if I can make you something with what we have," she said, walking to the kitchen. As she did, Big Mac, who had been quiet up til now, had walked up to me.

"You did a good thing Sombra."

"I know," I sighed. "I know."

Chapter 4

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Let it be a known fact that I have never been a big fan of sweets. Not to say that I never liked them, but they never really grew on me as I grew up. With all the training and the missions that I would go on, I learned to pretty much live off of dried meats and never really caring about much else. So when I saw Mrs. Cake walk out of the back room with a plate full of freashly made chocolate muffins, I almost flinched at the thought of eating them, and I'm sure that I winced when she put them down in front of me.

"Eat as much as you like sweetie." She said to me, still smiling as she placed down a glass of cold water on the one good table. It almost hurt to look at the muffins she made for me along with the excited look she had. Big Mac had left while she was making them, but not after making sure that she was fine and offering her and her children a ride to the hospital when she was done. The only reason she didn't take it was because she said the visiting hours were over.

"I'm beginning to wish that you took that ride"I got up from my seat and looked to her. She had a confused look, wonder why I was standing.

"Do you think that I can get these in a bag Mrs. Cake?" I asked, picking up the glass and take downing it in a couple gulps. Once again she looked at me with confusion.

"Of course, but is there somewhere that you need to be?" She asked, taking the plate around the counter and grabbing a small paper bag.

"Yes, I'm trying to find a library so that I can study." I answered, watching her bag the brown pastries.

"But it's already so late dear, the library won't be open until tomorrow morning." She said while reaching handing me the bag. And she was right, as I looked out of the cracked window and saw nothing but a few house lights on.

'Damn, have I really been here that long. 'I supposed it made sense, seeing as when I was leaving the forest the sun was barely going down. "But there were so many people outside shopping when I got here." I said, mostly to myself. But Mrs. Cake answered anyway.

"Some of the shops want to get rid of the produce that they have, so they sell it for a lower price around closing time, for fresh food tomorrow. You must have came around the closing rush." She explained.

"I guess, you know this place better than I do." I shrugged, before two voices had began to cry upstairs almost demanding their mother to come upstairs.

"Oh my! It's their feeding time." She gasped, before looking back at me.

she reached over the counter and for the second time today, pulled me into a hug. "Thank you so much, you've helped us more than you'll ever know." She said, this time the hug was over in a couple seconds. When the hug was over, she handed me the bag and started to go upstairs to tend to her children's needs.

"I hope everything works out Mrs. Cake." And with that I had begun to take my leave. As I walked down the road, I heard the sound of rapid steps behind me, when I had turned around, I saw the same group of girls who nearly ran me over early, along with the children I saved, with the pink haired one leading them. Following them was two women clad in golden armor, and armed with spears. They didn't seem to notice me though as they all had their eyes set on the gingerbread house.

"Mrs. Cake!"The girl screamed in obvious panic, before slamming into the front door. An audible gasp was heard from all of them, before she, a long with the others, ran in.

'they must be close to the Cakes.'I concluded, before I continued to walk down the street, hoping to find somewhere to stay the night.

About ten minutes of walking, and a few late walkers and some gaurds giving me questioning looks. I had found a bridge that had been a top a small river.

"That should be a good spot." I mumbled, before looking around. After waiting for two guards to round a corner and making sure no one else was around, I had ducked underneath the bridge. Fortunately, I saw no one else under it and had sat down on the cool grass, wincing as my leg had suddenly cramped.

"Damn." I grunted, massaging my leg until the cramp went down. "Over forty year of mercenary work, only to go back a weak teen." I sighed, the fight with those...'timber wolves' had nearly done me in. I had forgot what I was, and thinking that I was in an adults body, I thought that I would have a better chance at beating them.

'Guess I thought wrong.' A sudden growl had pulled me from my thoughts, reminding me that I still hadn't eaten. Although the dark had made it hard to see, I didn't have any problem finding where I had placed the bag. I opened it and grimaced at the thought of eating the chocolate muffins. Reaching in the bag, I pulled out one of the five muffins and for a few second just held it, before sighing.

"Well beggars can't be choosers." And without a second thought, I took a bite. There was only two word that came to mind as I tasted the muffin

'Holy shit'

Spike's POV

The crusaders and I were gasping for air as we had waited along with the rest of the girls for Pinkie, and Twilight to come back down the stairs. The other girls were looking around the dining area with shocked looks on their faces. Except for Rainbow Dash, who wore a angry look on her face. When she had first saw the destruction, she almost flew out the door to go on a man hunt to find the things who did this. She probably would have if the two guards hadn't left to help other gaurds find them first. They had been apparently looking all over town for more than an hour and were still searching. Not like that did anything to calm Rainbow Dash.

'I don't blame her.' I thought as I looked around at what used to be the dining area of sugar cube corner. There was very little that was not destroyed, even the stuff that wasn't destroyed was barely useable. Surprisingly the only thing that wasn't smashed was the windows.

"Dang it!" I heard Rainbow say, turning around I saw that the angry look she had turned to a dark look. Although Rainbow Dash is known for having a temper when I comes to anything that involves the people she cares for, nothing before had ever been this bad.

"Rainbow, dear." An elegant voice said, Rarity came into view a moment later and walked right in front of her. "I know what you're thinking and we both know it's a bad idea." She explained, but that didn't do much to calm her down.

"I know it's a bad idea Rarity, but I'm sick of this." She said, not even trying to hide the anger in her voice. "This the fourth time this month that those Dogs destroyed someone's business. And this is the second time that it has involved one of us!"

I shivered at the thought of the story that Applejack had told us. How Applebloom was playing with Winona after finishing her work and ran into a group of Dimond dogs stealing from their trees. If Big Mac hadn't been there to call her back for dinner, who knows what would have happened to her. I looked to Applebloom to see how she was and she looked stiff as a board. Applejack seemed to notice and walked behind her and put her arms over her. Applebloom seemed to lean into the hug, looking less stiff, but still nervous.

"We know that Rainbow, and as much as ah hate to say it, theres nothin' we can do." AppleJack said, looking up from Applebloom and into Rainbow Dash's eyes. "The Gaurds have been searchin' everywhere both inside and outside of town and they haven't found anythin'."

"Then they aren't looking hard enough!"

"You know they're looking dear. In fact, it's probably because they're trying so hard that those ruffians were able to get in." Rarity started, causing Rainbow to flinch. "Right now isn't the time to be shouting, there are more important things at the moment." Rarity finished, causing Rainbow to shoot her head up.

"What can be more important than this?" She said, sweeping her arm around to show the room as if it was hidden in plain sight.

"We need to support Pinkie and the Cakes through this." Fluttershy said, walking her way around the shattered remains of a table. The realization made Rainbow's eyes widen. As if on cue, we all heard footsteps coming from the stairs. Soon she came into view and we all crowded her.

"Twilight, where's Pinkie? How's she doing? Does she need help?" Rainbow asked, grabbing her shoulders, Twilight gently grabbed her hands and took them off of her.

"She's up stairs helping Mrs. Cake put the twins to sleep and she's fine." She answered, Rainbow sighed as if she was expecting a worse answer. We all stood in silence for a bit, the air was heavy as we all wanted to ask something, but something was stopping us.

"What going to happen Twilight?" I suddenly asked, the question that everyone wanted to ask but know one wanted to say. "Are they going to close sugar cube corner?" We waited, holding our breath to hear what she was going to say.

"Yes, they are going to have to close down." She answered, but before an the uproar could start. "They're going to close down for a week or two at most before they open up again."

"Really!?" We all shouted, waiting for her to explain, she nodded.

"Yes, Mrs. Cake told me that after the dogs destroyed the store, someone had come with Big Mac while he was making a delivery and had given her a large amount of gems. The gems she has are rare gems so she has enough to pay for all the damages and the hospital bills and still have a lot left over." She said, a smile came to her face, we all followed soon after, relieved that Pinkie and the Cakes were going to be fine.

"Someone just gave her a bag full of rare gems?" Rainbow said in a suspicious tone. "Who would just give away a bag full of gem, do we know them?

"Yes Rainbow, he just gave it to her." Twilight replied, losing her smile and replaced it with a worried look. "And as for who, I don't think we know him, but we definitely know the name."

"And that would be?"

"A guy named Sombra." The moment those words left her mouth, everyone lost their smiles.

"Sombra did this?" Sweetie Belle said, standing up from the booth she was sitting at, before clamping her mouth with her hand.

"Sweetie you know him?" Rariry asked, walking up to her. We all looked to each other, this didn't go unnoticed by the older girls. "You all know him?"

"Well not really." Scootaloo said, the girls then pushed us into a small row of chair that were useable before continuing. "We meet him in the forest while we were being chased by the timber wolves." The girls had already known about us being chased, but they still didn't know how we escaped.

"He helped you get away from them?" Twilight asked, looking at me.

"Not really."

"Then what did he do? Theres no way he could have killed three grown timber wolves by himself."Rainbow asked, almost demanding an answer with her looks alone.

"Well that's what he did." Scootaloo answered in an excited tone. She then went on to describe every moment that happened in the fight. From the beginning when he had slammed a wolf mid-lunge to the ground with his knife, to the gruesome end when he tore the last wolf's head off its shoulders. "It was so cool, he was so strong, and fast and it didn't even look like he had a fighting style, he just moved. It was almost as cool as seeing Rainbow Dash fight." She finished, which caught Sweetie, Applebloom, and I by surprise, she never compared anyone to Rainbow Dash as she was just in a league of her own, but he did seem pretty close to the girls skill.

"No no no this doesn't make any sense." Twilight mumbled, pacing around and biting her nail, a habit she has when she's nervous or about to freak out.

"What dosen't make sense Twilight?" Applebloom asked, looking over to Twilight.

"What doesn't make sense is that this 'Sombra' shouldn't have been able to damage a grown timber wolf." She said. "The wood that makes a grown timber wolf's body is magical, so him shoving a knife through its body would be like trying to put a knife through a rock. And to tear its head off its body should be even harder. That's why we use our exalted weapon on them or burn them, not regular swords, it's almost impossible." She explained, nearly ripping her hair out. The other girls nodded to her explanation, understanding what this could possibly mean.

"Really! So he's stronger than I thought?" Scootaloo said, not noticing Twilights frustration or the seriousness of the situation, before looking to Rainbow. "Can you do that?"

"W-Well," Rainbow Dash stuttered, looking around sheepishly. "I never really thought to try, but maybe."

"I'm sure you can do it, there's nothing you can't do. After all, you're one the strongest girls in Ponyville." She praised

"Why don't we call it a night." Aj said after noticing twilights ever increasing frustration. "We can talk more about this Sombra character after we have a good night of rest and we can meet up early in the morning, and tell Pinkie about this. For now we need a break." Everyone seemed to agree with that and one by one we had walked out the door without making a sound to not risk the twins walking up if they had been put to sleep.

"Let's meet at the library tomorrow morning." Twilight said, now looking less like she was going to blow a blood vessel. Everyone agreed and went our separate ways. When we got to the bridge, I spoke up

"So what's going to happen Twilight?"

"We're going to talk in the morning and see, but if Sombra even closely resembles that...mage, then we are going to bring the princess's in on this matter." She explained.

"Can he really be him Twilight, you said you girls destroyed him when you last fought him. And would he really do all the stuff he did if was that mage." I asked, noticing my own fear that was in my voice. Twilight shook her head.

"You've known for thirty minutes at most, and when it comes to cases like this, we can't take any risks." She said keeping her face forward. "We can't allow the shadow mage to exist once again."

Sombra's POV

"That old bastard." I mumbled to myself as I threw the last of the chocolate muffins in my mouth. All my life the only sugar that I had came from fruits that I had got from my travels and missions, and the only candy that I got was when I was ten from my teacher. It had been that dark chocolate crap that people ate when they wanted to feel healthy. It had completely ruined sweets for me from then on, thinking that all chocolate tasted like that. I was wrong.

'I'm going to need to go back there when I have the chance." I thought, finally laying back and try to get some sleep on this chilly night.

"So what's going to happen Twilight?" I heard someone say above me I perked up at the voice

'Spike'

"We're going to talk in the morning and see, but if Sombra even closely resembles that...mage, then we are going to bring the princess's in on this matter." A feminine voice said, this voice I thought was this 'Twilight' character.

'Princesses?' I thought, before realizing that the two of them were talking about me. I stood up and tried to listen to the conversation above me.

"Can he really be him Twilight, you said you girls destroyed him when you last fought him. And would he really do all the stuff he did if was that mage?" Spike said, sound like he was trying to convince himself more than Twilight.

""You've known for thirty minutes at most, and when it comes to cases like this, we can't take any risks." She said as she came to the end of the bridge. "We can't allow the shadow mage to exist once again." She said ominously, before she walk away, leaving me to my thoughts. I sat back down, thinking about what I just heard. For some reason, some people are scared that I might resemble this 'shadow mage' in some way. And said people have connections to the princess's. That could be a really big problem for me if I want to try to get by without being noticed.

"Looks like I might have to leave earlier than I thought." I sighed, laying back down on the grass and finding a good position.

'Who in the world is the Shadow Mage?' I thought, before shutting my eyes and letting sleep take over.

Chapter 5

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Darkness, for the second time today I was surrounded by complete, utter darkness. But unlike the first time that this had happened, this time I knew exactly where I was.

"MOTHERFUCKER!!!" I shouted in rage, kneeling and punching what I assumed was the floor. There was a satisfying crack as my gloved fist had made contact with the solid shadow I was standing on, but even me possibly breaking my hand didn't distract me from the boiling rage that rested in my chest. This was the second time that I was here and if the first time I arrived here means anything, that can only mean one thing. "I FUCKING DIED IN MY SLEEP!"

"How could this have happened?" Was the only question that I could think of past all of the anger. The last thing that I remembered was falling asleep under the bridge. It couldn't have been the weather, it wasn't nearly cold enough to kill anyone sleeping outside. "someone must have killed me." I thought, now calming down enough to think logically. There weren't many people that would want to kill me. There were only two that had come to mind. One of them being that girl that was talking to spike, Twilight.

"It can't be her," I mumbled to myself, she had no reason to even think of killing me. She was only suspicious of me when I heard them talking about me, it didn't seem like they were ready to kill me based on that alone. That meant that there was only one other option for who did this.

"THOSE FUCKING DOGS!" I yelled into the void, I then proceeded to let loose a string of curses that would shock a veteran. The cursing continued for another five minutes, in those five minutes the rage that I felt had increased tenfolds. This was my second chance, the second chance that I had a life, and it had ended because some wannabe gangsters killed me in my sleep like the bitches they were.

Though I was surrounded by nothing but darkness I could feel the darkness respond to my anger. The shadows that I was standing on had slowly begun to rise as my anger did, alongside the heat in my body. But I paid them no mind all I could think of was how I was now going to be left in this dark void for the rest of my time alone with nothing but my thoughts for the rest of my time. It was a thought that had only added to my anger, but there was another feeling that I felt as I continued to think of me being left alone in this void forever. It was a feeling that I wasn't familiar with, but it continued to rise along with my anger the more I thought. As both of the emotions had begun to reach the breaking point I had realized what this emotion was.

....It was fear

With that thought, there was a sound of a breaking chain somewhere and then the shadows that had shot out and had begun to cover my leg.

I immediately tried to pull my leg out of the shadow, remembering the pain that I felt the last time that I was caught in it. Unlike the last time though, I was not being consumed by all of the shadows around me, but the shadow on my leg had begun to make its way up my leg, past my torso, and into my mouth. I had tried to stop it by closing my mouth and covering it with my hand. But that did nothing but inconvenience the living shade as it made its way through any opening it could. I closed my eyes, waiting for the pain to come. After five seconds it had arrived, and the pain that I felt was nothing like the last time.

Unlike the pain of breaking bone and tearing muscles that I felt last time, this time it felt like someone was pushing an ice-cold spike next to all my veins. Though there was still pain, it wasn't anything that I hadn't felt before. For ten minutes I laid there, biting down on my cloak as I waited for whatever was happening inside of me to finish. When the pain stopped I just laid there, panting for breath. My mind was hazy after feeling that and my entire body just felt sore.

I groaned as I rolled over and tried to stand up, but it seems that whatever that thing did to me focused on the head as my vision was swimming. So once again I laid there on the cold floor, waiting for the pain in my head to go away. As I waited, I had heard footsteps behind me, along with the sound of clanking metal. Forcing myself to turn to the other side I saw a large, muscular, man.

The man was tall, maybe around 6'6, and his body was covered in a beautiful, light silver armor. Over his shoulder was a red cape that looked like it was made with the most expensive material that money could buy. The fur had run along the edges of the cape that had been so white that it looked like it had been made of fresh snow.

The armor that the man wore had been a sharp contrast to the man's dark skin. He had sharp facial features, as well as a thin, well-kept beard running along his jawline. His lips were curved into a sinister grin that was full of white teeth. On his head, he wore a crown with five cracked horns, and two running on either side of it. The cracked horn in the middle brought the most attention as it was silver at the base, but it was leaking a black mist where it broke. The hair that ran through it looked like it was made of shadows rather than hair and it seemed to wave in a nonexistent breeze. His eyes had my attention the most, the sclera of both of his eyes was a wicked green instead of the natural white. The irises were a dark red if his eyes didn't have the green they would have looked exactly like mine.

He stopped walking when he finally reached me and he looked down at me. His eyes didn't change at all, but I could tell that he was examining me.

"W-who-" I chocked out before my head started to pound against my skull. Whatever the man was doing, he seemed to have finished as his smile seemed to grow just a fraction.

"with....his...ody...is... com..ete." Was all I heard before he took his hand and held his palm towards me. I had then slowly started to sink into the darkness. I started up at him, not even fighting back as I slowly sunk down. It wasn't until I looked at his wrist that I finally realized what had made that breaking noise earlier. Around his gauntleted wrist was a large, heavy cuff that looked like it could hold back a bear. A chain was hanging off of the cuff, runes had been covering it up until where the chain had been torn off in one of the links. I looked at his other arm and saw that his other arm and both of his legs had similar cuffs on them, but instead of the chains being broken they had seemed to sink into the darkness. Those were the last things that I had seen before I had full sunk in the darkness.

Ponyvile

My eyes shot open and my body shot up as I woke up from my dream. As I shot up, my head impacted something hard and sent me sprawling back on to the ground. I laid there for a minute and let my head spin, as I waited for my head to finally clear from the impact I had realized something. I shot up again, this time getting into a kneeling position. I looked around and saw that I was still under the bridge, the only difference is that my cloak was next to me instead of wrapped around my body.

"I'm alive?" I said, unsure if I was, I then started to feel my body all around. Only when I got to the back of my head and felt the large lump that was starting to for where I hit my head was I sure that I was indeed. I almost wanted to cry, I wasn't dead, I wasn't going to be left in that dark void until I lost my sanity. Instead of crying, I laughed. It was more hysterical than it was genuine. If anyone had seen me right now, they would probably grab the nearest guard and have to explain the hysterical teen that was under the bridge. But right now, I didn't care, I was alive.

I didn't understand where all of these emotions were coming from about me dying. I had been in so many near-death situations that I thought that actually dying wouldn't be such a big deal. I wasn't a big deal to me the first time I had been in the void.

"Maybe it's because of this new body." I thought, finally calming down and rubbing the tears from my eyes. When I finally calmed down, I had finally noticed the new feeling that was in my body. It was a cold, yet welcome feeling like there was cold water running alongside my blood. It was only then that I remembered where I had been only ten minutes ago, and then my anger had begun to rise once again. I had been here for only two days, and in those two days, I had been pulled into the void and had been put in some kind of painful experience. But unlike the first time, I had been in the void, where I had thought that it was some sort of divine punishment for all that I have done, but now I'm starting to think that I was brought here for completely different reasons. Those reasons were probably going to be connected to that man I saw in the void.

"The Shadow Mage." I said slowly, not sure if I had the name right, "I'll have to go to the library and see if I can find anything on that name." with the name still in my mind I slowly crawled to get out from under the bridge, remembering to grab my cloak. As I got out from underneath the bridge I wrapped my cloak around my waist to hide my mask and most of the gear that was in my small utility belt which was still somehow clipped to my pants.

"I'm going to have to find a better way to hide all of this gear." I thought, finishing the knot in front of my waist. Most of the stuff that I had in my belt wouldn't raise any suspicions, like my lighter, some ruined cigarettes (those were getting thrown out), a compass, some pain killers, a small medkit, and my lock pick and a little more. The other things that I had definitely would raise suspicion, I might be able to pass off my gun as something else if this world wasn't advanced enough to know what it was, as well as the extra rounds that I had for it. but there was no chance I could convince anyone that my knives weren't what they actually were. My phone is also a maybe, it was a simple android that my clients would call me on and that I was able to throw away if I was ever found out. It worked, as it had a waterproof case, but it was pretty much useless as this world had no signal of any kind. It was the first thing that I had checked before I had found out that I was in a different world.

"I'll hold on to it." I shrugged, something that I had been taught was that nothing was ever truly useless. I looked up to the sky and saw that the sun was barely over the horizon, showing a beautiful shade of orange, along with some more of those flying people moving dark looking clouds into place.

"So I guess that they're in charge of the weather," I said to myself, still somewhat baffled that the people in this world were able to do stuff like this, and if what the girl I meet in the forest was anything to go by, there was more that these people can do.

"Sombra?" I turned around as I heard my name and saw a familiar face that I had doubted I would see so soon.

"Mrs. Cake?" I said in return, and watch as she walked up to me with a large stroller grasped in her hands and an umbrella hanging off her arm. She smiled brightly as she walked up to me, as soon as she got within reach of me, she reached out and pulled me into a hug again. My eyes had widened as the shorter woman wrapped her arms around my waist and her head to my chest. I had to physically restrain myself to not push her away from me. I never received this kind of affection growing up, so her doing this to me was something new, and I could really tell if I liked it or not. I knew that she was no harm to me, but the only time anyone would wrap their hand around me was to take me to the ground.

" or if I was enjoying a night with a woman." I thought before I instantly shot it down. Mrs. Cake was a beautiful woman, but she seemed so motherly that to think any sexual thought of her almost made me sick. The hug ended a second later and she smiled up at me and took a step back.

"Good morning Mrs. Cake," I greeted dumbly, still getting over the hug. "What are you doing up so early in the morning?"

"Good morning Sombra, I was just going to take my children to go see their father in the hospital today before the rain started. So I woke up and got the kids ready, but then I saw you..um." She began to trail off as her smile was replaced with a look of concern.

"Is there a problem Mrs. Cake?" Her face scrunched in thought as she had tried to find the correct words. As she did, I took at what was inside her stroller. They were two babies, a boy, and a girl, that couldn't have been over a year old playing with each. When they had seen that I was looking at them, both had stopped and stared at me. The boy had brown wavy hair that seemed to curve up the farther out it got, and his eye were a somewhat greyish brown color that had stared deeply into mine. I was the first to break eye contact, letting him have this victory as I look over to his sister. This one, unlike her brother, had orange, curly hair on the top of her head that was tied at the top, and she had eyes that were a light blue color. Both of them were wearing a onesie, the boy had a goldish grey while the girl had a bright yellow.

The girl then slowly held out her hand, and then a blue aura the color of her eyes had surrounded her hand. I was mesmerized by it that I almost didn't notice some locks of my hair were being pulled down. Hard.

"Woah!" I cried as I put my hand on both sides of the stroller to stop me from headbutting the children.

"Oh my goodness!" Mrs. Cake cried out as she grabbed my shoulders and pulled me back with all her might. I pushed as hard as I could but all that did was make her pull harder. Mrs. Cake then let go, realizing that this wasn't working and went to grab the child herself and had tried to coax her to stop while grabbing her small hand. But even grabbing her didn't stop the pulling, only drag me in her direction. Mrs. Cake started to panic as she saw me grab onto my aura covered hair and keep my feet planted. She kept trying, but when she looked down at my feet, she saw that they were starting to leave trails in the dirt from being damaged. After giving me one more panicked look, she shoved the baby into my arms and waited for me to have a good hand on her. Only when her mother let go did her magical grasp on my hair left, by the end of the whole ordeal both Mrs. Cake and I were left panting to calm our racing hearts.

"telekinesis, babies can learn telekinesis" I thought, looking down at the kid with a wide-eyed look. She looked right back at me as if she did nothing wrong.

"I think that she wanted to get a better look at you." Mrs. Cake explained, walking to the stroller and grabbing her brother, who looked scared shitless about the entire situation.

"Geez, " I chuckled awkwardly, still not too sure how I should react. "Trying to get a guys attention before his name, now that's forward." I joked, trying to make light of the earlier situation. Mrs. Cake didn't laugh, in fact, she started to flush.

"I'm so sorry!" She said to me, she then went to explain how baby "mages" could have sudden outbursts of magic and that they didn't know any better or how to truly control it.

"Mrs. Cake you're fine, no one truly got hurt." I said, looking down in the baby in my arms. I then froze at the realization that there was a baby in my arms. The baby was still looking at me as is she was trying to see if I was just wearing a mask. "Umm, hi there, what's your name?" I said in an unsure tone like I was expecting her to talk back to me.

"That little one is named Pumpkin Cake," Mrs. Cake said, answering for the child as she had put the other one back into the stroller. IIn responds to her name, Pumpkin turned around and looked at her mother. "And her brother's name is Pound Cake." She said, walking over and grabbing her daughter, the baby's face scrunched, but she seemed satisfied at what she got out of looking at me.

"I swear, most of the people I met in this town are named after foods." I thought as I watched Mrs. Cake strap her children in the stroller.

"So what was it you were going to ask me, Mrs. Cake?" I said, trying to get my mind off of the babies as fast as I could, after this, I never wanted to see another baby mage again if that's what they are capable of. Once again Mrs. Cake's face wrinkled in thought. She then looked up at me and smiled.

"Can I make do something for me Sombra?" She asked, I raised an eye brow at her. Requests for me were nothing new, but I doubted that Mrs. Cake was the type of woman to make any dangerous request, or have any real need for them.

"Sure." I shrugged.

"Can you come with me to the hospital and meet my husband, Mr. Cake?"

Chapter 6

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Spike's POV

Library

I woke up early in the morning due to the sun assaulting my eyes with a bright rays. I turned around to try and go back to sleep. But of course that had no effect.

"Alright, I'll get up." I said to myself, yawning as I swung my legs around my bed and jumped down to cool wooden floors. Looking up to my clock and saw it was a little past seven, though a specific time was never set I knew that the girls would be here soon to discuss the Sombra situation.

I shivered, remembering the time when Sombra the Shadow Mage nearly took over the Crystal Empire. It was terrifying to think just how strong one mage could be if given enough power. And that door door we had opened the door that had revealed to me my greatest fear. If Twilight hadn't snapped me out of that trance, I probably would have got down on my knees and begged the fake to let me stay.

There was also the man himself who was terrifying. Able to control people with a single gaze of his red eyes, able to control the shadows as if they were alive, able to step into the shadows as though they were his home, the man was a the personification of a nightmare. It's really hard to believe that such a man truly existed.

But then there was Sombra, the teenager who had put his own life at risk to save four kids when he didn't really need to. He came to check on us to see if we were hurt, and I may have not known him for long, the concern in his eyes was genuine. And now we are hearing that he gave the Cakes a large amount of money when they were in attacked by the Diamond Dog. I wouldn't expect anyone to give that much money to someone they didn't know, yet Sombra did it.

"I just don't know what to think" I groaned, but i put that thought to the back of my mind, for now I had to make sure that Twilight was awake. I walked out to the hall and began to make my way towards the door on the other side of the stairs. I didn't make it half way to her room before I heard snoring coming from down stairs.

'Oh no, please don't tell me she did it again.'I ran down the stair, already preparing for what I was about to see. I looked to the right when I got to the bottom of the stairs and sighed. There Twilight was, dead asleep on the couch wearing her pajamas and surrounded by books in what could be considered organized chaos. I walked towards one of the books and read the title.

"Magic Theories Vol. 3: Rare and unusual magics." I read out loud, before picking up a different book. "Arcanology: a deeper look into distant magic." I read again, getting confused as to what Twilight thought she could get out of these books. I put the books aside and walked up to her, deciding to ask her.

"Twilight, wake up." I said, gently shaking her. My response was a sleepy grumble that like she was saying 'voodoo'. I shook her harder, but she still wouldn't wake up. Then an idea struck me, an idea that might be considered rude, but worse things were done between us. I got up and looked around for a certain object. When I found said object, a piece of rolled parchment, I grabbed it and got ready to put on an act.

"Twilight, wake up!" I shouted trying my best to sound as panicked as I possibly could. That got a response as now Twilight was sitting up, but still had a groggy look. "Look, it's an urgent message from the princess, she needs a response right now!"

That got her going, it didnt even take a second for her to shoot off of the couch and trip over all the books that she left on the floor. And though the books seemed to have tried, they didn't stop her from reaching for the "message" and snatching it from my hand. I watch as she search the blank parchment, trying to see if there was a hidden message, even going so far as to turn it over.

When she finally concluded that it was blank, she fixed me with a glare. The glare she sent leaned more to the crazy side rather than angry do to the wild bed head that she had. I couldn't help it, I laughed.

"Not funny, Spike." She said, rolling up the paper and throwing it at me, I caught it and tried to take the grin off my face.

"What were you doing sleeping down here Twi?" I asked to distract myself from laughing. It almost worked immediately, as the mood in the room shifted immediately. Twilight sighed and walked over to the couch, using her magic to lift all the books in the air. The books were cover in a purple glow, along with her hands, moving through the air into all of the proper places along the bookshelves, leaving the room looking as though it was never touching.

"I'm reading about all know magic that I have access to in this library." She said, rubbing a knuckle into both her eyes. I waited for her to follow up, but she yawned and looked like she was ready to go back to sleep.

"Twilight!" I shouted, she jumped at my shouting, waking back up."why were you reading all these books?" She shook her head, remembering where she was and started again.

"I was reading to see if there was any possible way that Sombra survived"

"Did you find anything?"

"No, King Sombra's magic was unique, so there isn't a lot of information that I can find with the books I have on hand." She explained.

"But I thought you said that Sombra used shadow magic, you told me that it was extremely rare but people could still do it." I said, remembering all the lessons that Twilight gave me.

Magic was a crazy thing in this world in how people were able to use it. In Equestria, how you use magic determines what race you are, Earthbound, Mage, and Cloudwalker being the most common

Those who are Earthbound used there by keeping it in there body with no way to use it externally. Because of this, Earthbound are the physical superior race, and those who train their magic can make themselves much stronger than their appearance lead.

Those who are Mages can use the magic in their bodies externally in many different ways. They can use their magic to pick up objects and throw them to name the most basic. But those who train hard enough could do things like teleport. Their magic was the most versatile.

Cloudwalkers are a special case, their name being something they are only called in Equestria. They can also use their magic externally, but instead of being able to manipulate objects, they can form extra limbs. What limbs they can for are determined by genetic, as Twilight said, but wings are the common one in Equestria. They can also walk and move the clouds, giving them a indirect ability to control weather. That was why they were in charge of the weather.

Of course there was other magic that was outside of Equestria, me being an example. I was Dragon born and we are able to breath magic fire and withstand extreme heat just being an example.

"You're not wrong spike, but that's not the only thing that made him strong." She explained, snapping me out of my own monologue. "What made Sombra was how he fused his shadow magic with dark magic. And because of that, I can't find anything that can find anything, since all books on dark magic are under lock and key."

Dark magic was another unique and scary case. It was basically a form of magic that corrupts anyones magic, willing or not, and makes it the most destructive it can possibly get. That was all that was know, atleast to most of the population. Twilight had better lessons, being Princess Celestia's best pupil and all, so she knew more and refused to tell me.

"Do you think there's a real chance that he could have survived." I asked, worry lacing my voice.

"Had you told me this yesterday, I would have told you that there was no possible way he could have survived." She answered, rubbing her temples to soothe her coming headache. "But now I'm hearing that a young man that's literally named after him that came into town."

I nodded, thinking that King Sombra could come to Ponyvile where the elements of harmony lived to get revenge on them. But Twilight stood before I could voice my opinions.

"We'll discuss this when the others get here, along with the crusaders. I don't want to waste energy jumping to conclusions anymore." She said, and without a second glance, she started walking to her bathroom.

"I guess that I should start getting ready to."

30 minutes later

It didn't take long for me to get ready, after the shower I just got ready and and started to set the library up for the up coming meeting.

After another ten minutes of moving couches and chairs to make a circle, Twilight opened the bathroom door, revealing herself in her usual clothes.

"You came just in time, you missed all the hard work." I joked, putting the last chair into place.

"I wouldn't be talking Spike, I still have yet to decide how I should punish you for going to the Everfree." I shot back, I winced at that, causing her to grin smugly as she walked down the stairs.

"Come on, I already told you that we we going to stay close to the edge of the forest." I said. She only shook her head.

"And I told you to not go into the forest unless you had one of us with you." She said, scolding me. "Sticking to the edge isn't enough anymore, the animals have been acting strange lately and it's more dangerous then when we first moved her. Even the hunter are taking less trips then they used to. Just last week, Glinting Arrow was nearly crippled, and he's a seasoned hunter."

She didn't need to explain to me that story. Glint is an older man, close to forty, who was our main provider for venison. We do have trade for beef and other meats, but they usually ran out before the next shipment because it was so popular. So we relied on hunters to bring us other meat. But ever since Gling was injured, more and more hunters had quit, as he was usually the one who guided everyone on what to do.

Before I could answer back to Twilight, there was a knock at the door. I turned around and walked towards the door. I opened and saw the all eight of our guests at the door.

"Morning girls." I said, moving to the side and letting them all in.

"Morning Spike." They all said lazily, all of them looking like they didn't sleep a wink. All of them expect the the crusaders and Pinkie Pie, who walked with a pep in her step.

"Good morning girl." Twilight said, taking the seat that was closet to the stairs. She receiving a good morning back and they all went to find their seats. When we all found our seats we stayed in silence for a few minutes, no one really wanting talk about this.

"So how should we start this." Rainbow asked. Twilight looked up, looking glad that someone started to speak.

"Maybe we should start with the man in question." Twilight responded, looking at both the crusaders and I. "You four are all we really have to go on right now.". All eyes in the room shifted to us, and we shifted uncomfortably.

"Well, what is there to really say? I think we covered everything that we could yesterday." Scootaloo explained, and the rest of use nodded.

"What did he look like?" Rarity asked. "Was he tall? Did he look muscular? What about his age?"

"N-No." Applebloom stuttered. "He wasn't old, he looked around he looked a little older that us. Ah' think he was fifteen, maybe sixteen."

"Yeah, his skin was tanned and he had black hair too." Sweetie Belle added.

"He was wearing really weird clothes too." I said, trying to remember what he was wearing. "He was wearing a lot of black, both his shirt and his pants. And his pants had a lot of pockets, way more then what anyone really needs. He had boots on instead of shoes. He also had glove covering his hands."

"Did he also have a cloak on?" Applejack asked, I thought about it for a minute and nodded.

"Ah' saw him." Applejack sighed leaning back in her chair. This time everyone turned their head towards her. "When we were running to go fetch the kids, there was someone that was walkin' own the same path. He had to jump out our way seeing as he didnt want to get stomped on. Didn't really give him too much mind, but I definitely saw him.

"Why didn't you say anything Applejack?" Rarity asked.

"Yeah, if you had I could have gotten a good look at him. I want to see what kind of person he is so I can throw him a big welcome to ponyville party." Pinkie said. Everyone looked at her, baffled that she could think about throwing a party right now. Especially for what we're discussing.

"Pinkie, you want to throw Sombra a party?" Fluttershy asked in a soft voice. Pinkie nodded towards her.

"Of course I want to throw him a party silly!" She said in her usual cheery tone, as if that explained it all.

'Then again, this is Pinkie Pie that might just explain everything.'

"Why would we throw him a party Pinkie, we're in the middle of deciding if were even going to report him to the princesses."

"Maybe we shouldn't tell the princesses then."

Twilight's eyes opened wide as though she just got smacked in the face, the others looked exactly the same. Fluttershy and Rarity going as far as to cover their mouths with their hands.

"How can you even say that Pinkie?" Twilight asked, recovering from her shock.

"I'm not saying that we don't report him so he can take over Twilight. I'm saying this because because I don't think he's the Sombra we defeated."

"What do you mean Pinkie." Rainbow asked from her seat, leaning forward with a serious expression.

"Well I was talking to Mrs. Cake yesterday when we both finally got the twins to calm down and I asked about Sombra." She explained, her hair losing both color and curl. "She told me that after the Dogs attacked and Mr. Cake was rushed to the hospital, she didn't I know what to do, so she just sat and cried with the twins in her arms."

The tension started to leave the room as pinkie told Mrs. Cakes story. It was hard to hear what was going Mrs. Cakes mind after both her shop and her husband were attacked. Applejack, who was sitting right next to her, gave her a supporting hand on her shoulder.

"She told me there was so much going through her head. What was she going to do with the shop? What was going to happen to her husband? What about the twins? What would she tell me? She was terrified of what would happen." She continued, never losing her smile, but even that was losing some of its joy." But then Sombra came in, helping Big mac with her order of apples." Applejack perked up at her brothers name, but didn't interrupt her, it would be something she would ask him later.

"Sombra was the one to find out and instead of doing what anyone would do and not get involved, he did the one thing nobody would expect of anyone, especially the big meanie King Sombra. He help buy giveing her a large bag of gems." She looked up, her curls regaining their color and her wide smile returning. "I think that if this was King Sombra, he would have just leave Mrs. Came without a care and let her shop go out of business."

Everyone stayed still I there chairs, shocked at how serious Pinkie was. It seemed that she was adamant about her choice on not telling the princesses and if I'm being honest, she pretty much convinced me.

"And besides," Pinkie said, her sudden mood shift giving everyone whiplash. "Have any of you heard a real reason on why these two Sombras are the same person?"

We all looked between each other, the answer being clear. No one had heard anything anything that lead to them being the same.

"Pinkie's right." Scootaloo said, standing up. "And besides, Sombra told us in the everfree that where he comes from, people don't use magic."

"WHAT!" Everyone, but the crusaders and I said.

"Where in this world could he have possibly came from that doesn't use magic?" Rarity asked, everyone nodded, being baffled at the idea that such a place existed.

"He told us that he came from a place that no one would probably know it was something that started with an A." Scootaloo paused for a minute to think.

"He said it was a place called America." I jumped in, helping her with the name.

"Yeah that's it! America!"

"Well he's right about one thing, I've never heard of this place before." Applejack said, and everyone agreed with her, even Twilight.

"See, not only does Sombra not resemble the Big meanie, he's also from a completely different place." Pinkie said, bouncing up and down in her seat.

"I don't know." Rainbow dash said.

"W-well do we have to make a final decision now?" Fluttershy asked. "It doesn't look like he's causing any trouble right now, and I think Pinkie is right on this. This isn't how the Shadow Mage would act if he was still Alive."

"No we don't have to make our decision no I suppose." I heard Twilight, I looked over to her and she looked relaxed now that the meeting looked like it was finally coming close to an end. "I would probably be a bad idea to come to one right now with what we have. Does anyone else have anything to add."

"Not much, but maybe he deserves the the benefit of the doubt." Applejack said standing up and stretching her leg out. "Ah' mean, we can sit and try to compare the two all we want, but for right now, none of us have truly got not meet him yet. So let's wait until we actually do." She finished, everyone seemed to agree and followed her lead, standing up and stretching.

And as if the universe was listening in on our conversation. The door had opened had begun to open and someone came in. The person who came in was none other than the one we had just been talking about. Sombra.

Every just looked and started at him, amazed by the sheer coincidence that had just happened, while he just started at the older girls with a confused look.

"Umm...Am I interrupting something?"

Author's Notes:

Hi guys I'm back with a new chapter and let me tell you it was really difficult to write this one up. Mostly because to me, writing cartoon characters having a serious conversation is really hard for me. And for some reasons I felt the need to explain what makes each of their magics unique, seeing as I felt that I couldn't just stick a pair a wings on a person and say that's ment to happen.

There also Pinkie, and how she feels about this. I mean, I pretty much wrecked her home in the third chapter, as well as made a character save it. It was hard for me to write her but I hope I got her, if i didn't I'm sure someone will tell me.

But that I'll I have to say about this, but maybe you have something. If you do, leave a comment or if it's that important, PM me. But until next time, see ya

Chapter 7

View Online

Sombra's POV

Ponyville Clinic

Hospitals were nothing new to me, I've been in and out of more hospital then I care to count. All of them being very similar, a large, tall building that practically blinded people with the amount of windows it had. Not only that, but the staff was also the same, nurses and doctors all dodging past each other, trying to either find the next patient to take care of,all of them just waiting for their shift to end. Wasn't the best point of view, but it was mine.

Coming to this hospital, the Ponyville clinic as Mrs. Cake called it, it was no different then what I've come to expect of hospitals. And it's because of that expectation that I was sitting on a chair outside og Mr. Cake's room door with a shocked look on my face.

"This world has a actual, functioning hospital." I thought, as I watched doctors and nurses pass by me, each of them either helping a patient, transporting medication, or doing some other task. When I saw the hospital from the outside, it didn't give me much hope for there being proper medical care. But imagine my shock when I watch medical equipment like heart rate monitors, IV bags, and a tray of diagnostic gear. And was the sole reason why it had me questioning the technology in this world. With me being lost in thought I failed to notice someone approaching me.

"Excuse me young man." I hear someone say, snapping out of my train of thought I looked my left and saw a nurse with light pink hair and skin so pale, I'd have thought she herself was a patient. Only reason I didnt was because of the light blue scrubs and nursing cap that she was wearing.

"Is there a problem?" I asked, it was probably too rough as she flinched when I answered. She regained her composure quickly though and took in a silent breath before answering.

"No, not a problem, but a question." She explained, standing a little straighter and looking me in my eyes. "There are multiple nurses that have seen you in this hallway for almost thirty minutes, and we've been wondering if you have any reason to be waiting outside of Mr. Cakes room?"

I raised a eyebrow at the question, it was a bit suspicious in it's own right. Why would a nurse be concerned at why I was standing outside a room. There were multiple other people who were doing the same when I was walking by and no one was questioned.

"I was asked to wait here by Mrs. Cake." I said giving her a suspicious look. "She wanted to talk to her husband before bringing me in there." I explained, that didn't seem to calm her, if anything she looked even more suspicious at me.

"Well, all people who are visiting are required to have a visitor tag on them. And we couldn't help be see you don't have one." She said, narrowing her eyes slightly as he looks down to my shirt.

I knew what she was referring to, I saw that Mrs. Cake had one and I didn't bother to ask for one as no one seemed to mind me walking in with her.

"No one seemed to mind when I was walking by earlier." I said. "Is it going to be a problem if i don't have one?"

"We would prefer that it not be a problem sir." She said, and that's when I finally saw them. A pair of guards were sticking close by the nurse, about ten feet down the hall and were staring directly at me. Both of the guards were strong looking males in gold plated armor, and both holding golden spears in a firm grip, ready to act in a moments notice.

"I don't see why this needs to be a problem." I said, trying to alleviate the situation. "I've done nothing wrong, and as I said, I came in with Mrs. Cake and her kids. They know I'm out here wait for them."

"What's you're name sir?" She asked, not even acknowledging what a said a moment ago.

"I don't see why that's important."

"Everyone here is very good friends with the Cakes." She said, her voice take on an edge."They always bring food for the staff and always brightens our days. She even had her children here. And we would hate to see them hurt more then they already are."

"Then I don't know why your giving me this conversation." I said, my voice taking on a little heat as I spoke up. I've done nothing to bother anyone, and yet, she was over here making out to be a criminal. And all because I forgot my visitors pass. "As i said before, Mrs. Cake brought me here to meet her husband and asked me to wait out here to get him ready. If your really that worried, just go in there and ask her yourself."

She didn't bother giving me a response, instead she just walked by me and entered Mr. Cakes room with a clenched jaw. As she walked by I started to get a weird feeling from her. I couldn't describe it, it was a small tugging that was in my chest that that made me fell as though I was invigorated. It went right along side that new, cold feeling that was in my body. The cold felt like it was running slightly faster inside my body and I had no idea what it was. I wanted to know what it was,but when the nurse closed the door, the feeling was gone. I wanted to open the door so that I can feel that feeling again to figure it out.

But I couldnt do that, not with the guards standing close by and watching me. Any staff that was going. To walk by was asked to wait by the guards. Some of them looked confused, but other were watching closely, almost daring me to try something.

'they must be the other ones who reported' i thought as everyone's eye's seemed to flick between me and the guards. Once again, I got that feeling in my chest, only this time it was felt like it came back three times as fast. Not only the pulling, but that cold feeling. Before the nurse closed the door, it felt like the my body had a slow river running through it. But right now, that slow river had just turned into a rushing rapid. And I wasn't a bad feeling either, it actually felt good, so good that I forgot about all the eyes on me and focused on this feeling.

I put a hand to my chest and tried to see if I could enjoy this feeling more. I didn't know what it was, but I knew I wanted more, and there was something in my mind that told me where to get it.

I looked up and looked at the few nurses and doctors who stayed, along with the two guards, the guards grips tighter on their spears, but I didnt care. The feeling got stronger as I looked at them, and when the feeling got stronger, a familiar voice made itself present.

"Make them fear us." It said, the voice sounding more like a low growl, but I didn't argue with it. "Make them tremble before us." it said, this time a little louder. I stood up, and once again, the feeling redoubled, along with the pleasure that came with it.

"I will show them that I am not not dead." It spoke once again, getting even louder then before. I felt like I wasn't in control of my actions anymore and I couldn't do anything to stop my foot from rising. I knew what would happen if I didn't stop myself, I knew that people would get hurt if I kept going, but it didn't matter to me anymore. It didn't matter to me that this place of healing would soon become a house of the dead. I need this, I need more of this...Power.

...This...fear...

"I will show them the might of a king!" And with that final statement, my foot had planted its self and I got ready to lunge at them.

"Sombra?"

I turned around and saw Mrs. Cake, along with the nurse that had questioned me. One look at Mrs. Cakes, that was all it took for me to come crashing back into reality. And with that reality came the realization of what I had nearly done. I broke out into a cold sweat as I took in a deep breath and thought about what had nearly happened. It must have shown in my face because Mrs. Cake walk up to me and put had hand on my arm.

"Are you okay dear?" She asked, the concern and comforting tone in her voice helping me calm down.

"Yeah," I said, sounding more like I was letting a breath put then actual words. "I'm fine."

She didnt look entirely convinced, but I wasn't look at her, I watched the rude nurse from earlier walk by both of us and directly to the guards that were watching me. She started talking to them in a low voice and I couldn't hear what they were saying but the guards seemed to visibly lose the tension I'm their body's the more she talked. By the time she finished talking, both of the guards had done some salute, and had made their way to the exit.

When everyone saw the guards leaving, everyone in the room relaxed and with it, the feeling in my body completely disappeared.

"Whays that girls problem?" I asked, trying to distract both Mrs. Cake and I from the current problem. Mrs. Cake looked over at the nurse who was walking back to us with a apologetic smile on her face.

"She didn't mean what she did Sombra, give her a chance to explain." She said,letting go of my arm and waiting for the nurse. When she finally stopped she had a nervous look on her face. She just stood there looking for she right words, I wasnt really in the mood to wait, so i started us off.

"So do you want to tell me why that happened?" I asked, finally calm enough to sound normal. Though I was calm, my temper was still there, and it almost showed in my voice. She looked up at me and and opened her mouth.

"I'm truly sorry for what we did to you." She apologized, looking like she was ready to cry. "Everyone here is really worried about what Mr. Cake, and when we saw you waiting out side his room, we were all scared that you were another diamond dog here to hurt them. Just waiting for the right time when no one was looking"

It took me a minute to think about it, but when I did, it hit me like a truck. The only reason that Mr. Cake was in the hospital was because a gang had destroyed their store and smashed his head in. If the hospital staff truly were friends of the Cakes then they would surely know that. What they didn't know, was who had it could have been any young adult that was walking in the town. And there I was, just sitting outside, nobody know who I was and I was just at the Cakes door.

"Are these Dogs really that bad?" I asked, losing my temper. She nodded her head to my question.

"Yes, they are. The Cakes weren't the only who were affected." She explained, shooting a sad look to Mrs. Cake. "They've been targeting businesses all over the town. Hardware, restaurants, the stalls, nowhere is to safe. Just last week, they went after the spa run by the Blossom sisters. The word around the town is that a group went in and asked for deep tissue massages." I watched her shiver as she thought about the incident.

"When they didn't get the ending they wanted, they began to destroy the spa. Thank Celestia that Aloe was brave enough to get someone to get the guards while they were massaging them."

It didn't take a genius to read what she ment by them not getting their ending. The bastards went to a spa thinking they were getting a "happy ending", when they didn't they got mad. It honestly disgusted me to think about it. And with all that I did in my life and what i was so close to doing moments ago, I surprised me.

"And when you saw me, you thought I was one of those Dogs?" I sighed, now all anger in my body leaving me. She nodded her head.

"No one in this hospital seemed to have seen or meet you before now. So after what happend with the Cakes and you not having a visitors pass, we assumed that you had either snuck your way in here and called the gaurds." She said.

"Well it's no surprise you haven't seen me. I just came into town yesterday." I said, scratching the back of my head

"Really," she gasped, I nodded my head. "Oh that even worse, I hope I didn't give you a bad impression of the town. It really is a nice town when you dont have the Dogs ruining it." She said, and I smiled a bit at that.

"It seems like a nice town, everything that's happend to me in this town really isn't its fault." I said, she sagged in relief and smiled.

"That's good." She said, holding out a hand. "My name is Red Heart." She said, I gave he a small smile and shook her hand. I opened my mouth to introduce myself before giving it a quick thought. Remembering my name situation.

'this will throw them for a loop.'

"My name is Angelus Sombra. But everyone just calls me Sombra." I said, I ignored the look that Red Heart gave me, turned to Mrs. Cake who looked just as confused, probably about my first name, and asked.

"Am I good to meet your husband now Mrs. Cake? " She blinked at my sudden question before nodding her head. I took her by her and and quickly walked towards the door.

"Well, it was strange, but it was nice to meet you Miss Red Heart." And with a wave I I gently pushed the door shut and turned around.

When the door closed behind me I look around and saw what I started to expect of this hospital. It was a decent sized room that was so white, that you could see dust. The room had two wooden beds with clipboards on the end of each of them. On top of the bed was what looked like, some type of call button. It was plain and unimaginative, but if I'm being honest, I was a fan of this design. I looked further down the room and saw a large curtain drawn, blocking my view from the rest of the room

"Ow! Pumpkin, please stop pulling on daddy's hair." Came a mans voice from behind the curtains. I felt a slight pulling at my sleeve, and saw Mrs. Cake smile at me and start to gently pulled me to the curtains like a mother trying to introduce her child to a new friend. It was weird for me because I was supposed to be a older then her by multiple years, yet she treated me like a child. I held back the urge to roll my eyes and went with her pulling. As we got closer, I hear the twins giggling, along with the father. Just before we entered, we stopped and Mrs. Cake let go, pointing towards my down at me as she let go.

I looked myself up and down, I wasn't really in the best of clothes. I was still wearing the clothes I came in, a black long sleeved shirt with grey cargo pants, and black boots. I still had my cloak tied around my waist to to hid the gear I brought. It made me feel like I was wearing a dress. I didn't care about that though...not much...

"why the hell is this bothering me?" I groan in my head. I'm fifty-seven damnit, I shouldn't be bother by things like this.

I looked back up to Mrs. Cake and shrugged, not much I can do right now, and she did catch me when i was waking up. She quieted a laugh and pointed at my hands. They were still gloved and I never even noticed. I took them off, taking a minute to start once again at the 'cutie mark'. It was truly a weird thing.

I looked back at Mrs. Cake and she gave me another smile, and begun to gently pull the curtain to the side.

The first thing I saw was a man who look like he was being tortured and enjoying it. The man on the bed was hold the twins on both side of him. Both of them held on to some part of him and pulled. Pumpkin was holding on to his cheek and hair, while Pound had a hold of his ear and neck. All of them had smiles on their faces, but the man's looked slightly force, mostly due to his daughter. The playing stopped when the curtain was fully drawn, the children turning around and staring at me once again. The man looked up at me and gently pulled the twins away from their face. When they let go he immediately gave them to his wife, as he did, he leaned close to his wife.

"I thought you would warn me when he was coming in." He said in a low voice, trying to fix himself up as he hide behind his wife.

"There was a misunderstanding." She whispered back, setting the twins in the stroller and helping to fix his hair. Though it did little to make it look presentable, especially with the large white patch on the side of his head. As he getting fixed up I got a look at him.

The best way to Mr. Cake was that he looked like the stereotypical ginger. He had bright orange hair that, at the moment, went in every direction. Not only that but his eyes were a pistachio green color that went perfectly with his hair. And to finish the look off, he had freckles that only went across his nose.

That was all I got before both of them Cakes decided that his hair was a lost cause. Mr. Cake back himself up with the help of his wife and stood straight against the head frame of the bed and gave me a smile as his wife backed away from him.

"I'll wait outside with the twins while you two talk." She said, before taking the stroller and walking out the front door. It was only when we heard the door shut when we started speaking.

"Hello young man, you must be Sombra." He said, looking as if he wasn't just fumbling with his hair seconds ago.

"Yes sir, that's me." I said, "My full name is Angelus Sombra, but everyone calls me Sombra." I finished, trying to think of the ways that I should act now that I appeared 15 again. He seemed to appreciate the manners and gave me a smile.

"Well Angelus Sombra, my name is Carrot Cake. But everyone knows me as Mr. Cake," He said, copying my introduction. "And I have heard quite a lot about you from my wife." He said, and I raised a brow.

"Really?" He nodded. "But we've been here for about an hour." That got him laughing.

"I know, my wife can talk with speed of an auctioneer when she wants to." He said, the kind smile on his face widening just a fraction.

"And I haven't really known her for that long." I said.

"Oh she had nice things to say about you, but that wasn't all she was talking about." He said, pausing for a second before continuing. "She was talking about what you did for us." He finished. I got feeling in my chest as he said that, for a second, I feared that it was the sensation from earlier. But after a second I realized that it wasnt the same. It felt good, but it wasnt the same.

The feeling that I felt earlier was a great feeling, but it was like a primal please, like a wild beast filling its stomach with great foods. The feeling I had right now was warm and comforting. Like it was letting me know that I should feel great for what I did did for them.

"Oh, that." I said, the feeling in my chest slowly moving it's way to my face. Was I going to blush? "You don't have to worry about it. It was nothing." I said, beating that feeling down with all my might.

"Really, now?" He chuckled. "Nothing you say?" He asked, and I nodded.

"Yeah, you guys were in trouble and I saw that i could help you." I said, but he shook his head this time.

"I don't think that I've met a man as young as you and be this humble." He said, bringing his head up and looked up. "Do you know what exactly you did Sombra?"

"Well...I gave you guys a lot of gems." I said. "And with those gems you'll be able to pay off the damages of your shop and hospital costs." Carrot cake nodded when I finished, but he looked at me as though he was expecting more.

"Is that all you think you did?"

"That's all I actually did."

He nodded and look away, thinking about the next words that he would say.

"Sombra," he started, looking me straight in my eyes. All traces of the man who man who fumbledwith his hair gone. "when you gave us those gems you didn't just save us from those damaged and Bill's. You just save our family and our entire livelihood."

I was a little lost on that matter, and it probably showed on my face. Mr. Cake chuckle once again and started to explain.

"My wife and I have been running Suger Cube Corner for a very long. About fourteen years two months ago." He said, looking up and losing the serious look he had on his face. "And from the moment we opened shop, we dreamed about it doing great. We had no back up plan for if this failed. We needed this to work out, we spent early morning and long nights to make the shop what it is today. After a while we saw that the shop was bringing us a great profit, me and my wife decided that we would do what we always wanted to do." He then looked behind me and towards the door, I got the message the moment he finished.

"You started your family." I stated, and he nodded.

"That we did," he said. "We had more then enough money to make it work and my wife and I were happy that we could do it. Even two kids didnt put a real dent in out plan. We were happy that we could enjoy our work and time with the kids" His mood then grew dark.

"But then the Diamond Dogs came and did what they did." He said. "When I woke up last night, I thought that we were done for. That all of our savings would go into both me and the shop and we would have to start over again. Only this time we had two babies to add on to that work load. And all because I couldn't protect it." He said in a soft voice, sounding as if it would break if it went any higher.

"The doctor had to give me medication to help me sleep last night after they found out I was better after all they did to help me, but even then it was only for three hours before I woke again." I said, composing himself and brought a small smile once again. "But then my wife comes in here and tells me that a young man covered everything and that we don't have to pay a single bit out of pocket. I felt the biggest relief after hearing that. It's because of you Sombra that I can leave this Hospital with a clear mind. That I can go to my broken shop and know that it will all be fixed. It's because of you that we wont have to worry where our next meal will come from."

The looked at me on one last time and this time, he looked like I was ready sleep for twenty years.

"So please Sombra, even if you don't believe what I'm about to say, just know that I mean what I'm about to say. Thank you Angelus Sombra, you've help us more then you can ever possibly imagine. If you ever need help, don't hesitate to come to us. We will do everything in our power to help you." And with that Mr. Cake pulled himself forward and put his head against the pillow. It took last then ten seconds before I started to hear snoring coming from him.

I didn't stay long after he fell asleep, after all that he just said there was a lot going on in my chest and body. That please, warm feel came again and this time I felt it through my whole body. As I felt these emotions going through my body, I felt something wet come down my cheeks before I opened the door. I put a hand to my cheek and pulled away. It was a tear

'What the hell is wrong with me?' I thought as I rubbed my hands to my cheeks and wiped them all away. Cry was something I never did, not even in my previous life with all the beatings and the wounds I had. It was something I just thought wasn't possible for me. I put it in the increaseing list if things the happened in the last hour and a half. I was exhausted and i didnt know how much more i could do this.

When I walked out I saw Mrs. Cake, along with some of the other nurses, playing with the twins. She saw me and started to approach me, when she finally stood close enough, I told her how her husband was sleeping and probably wouldn't wake for while.

"Well I'll just stay here then and sit close until visiting hour are done." She said. "Didn't you say that you needed to go to the library today?" She said. I nodded.

"Yeah, I'm probably going to get some books and read what I can." I said. "Do you think you can tell me where it is?"

"Oh dear, all you need to do is find the big tree that's in the town." She said.

"Is the library close to the big tree?" I asked and she, like her husband, chuckled.

"You can say that dear." I nodded and turned to say take my leave. "Sombra before you leave can, I ask one more favor from you?" I turned back around and gave her my attention again.

"Sure." I said, wanting to leave so I can sort the mess in my head out.

"They are going to discharge my husband tomorrow, do you think that you can meet us both at Sugar Cube Corner again?" She requested.

"Sure." I said again, no giving her request much thought and tried to make my way out. Though not before Mrs. Cakes signature hugs.

"Thank you Sombra," she said pulling away and to me. "Have a good day."

I dont even know if i gave her a response, I just took my leave and tried to make sense of everything that that was happening to me. It took me ten minutes to find a exit on my own and the moment I did, i immediately started to look for this giant tree that Mrs. Cake said. I found it close to the center of the town and made my way there sighing as I made my way there.

"I don't think I can do any more of these meetings today."

Author's Notes:

Woooow, another chapter that took alot out of me, that something new. No but seriously though, if I dont put this in the note just pretend it's there.
Now on the story, I really hope I got the emotional moments right in this chapter. I tried to set it up that there is something going on with him and he wants to know what it is, but cant freak out and give himself away. It's a hard thing to do without making the characters just seem emotionless. Not only that but the glove thing will be explained, it was supposed to in this chapter, but it was already long enough and I didnt think it was entirely necessary to explain in this chapter.

That's pretty much it all I have to say, but if you guys have something to say you can leave a comment, or if it's that important, PM me. If you can also drop a thumbs up, I would really appreciate it. But in the mean time, have a good day.

Chapter 8

View Online

Sombra's POV

The walk to the library didn't take that long, it was probably about a fifteen minute walk. I spent that time just trying to clear my head of what happened at the hospital. So many things happened that I couldn't make any sense of. But what had me concerned was that voice. That was the second time I heard that voice, and both time after I heard it I felt like i was going to lose control of myself.

"Am I starting to go crazy?" I muttered, I would say that was the only explanation. But right now, I wasn't sure about that. Especially since I was pulled into this world of magic and fantasy. I stopped in front of the tree and finally saw it for what it truly was, A literal tree house. I looked at the sign in the front of the tree and sighed

"Of fucking course the tree is the library." I muttered, taking in a deep breath to calm myself. I was seriously going to strangle architech that made this town.

Putting the crazy architecture of this town aside, I walked up to the door of the library to hopeful answer some of my questions and take the rest of the day to read.

"Hopefully there's no more meetings today."

"Umm...Am I interrupting something?" I asked warily to the odd group of young women in front of me. Now I say odd not because they looked weird or crazy, I say odd because all of these girls looked like they should want anything to do with each other. Mostly because they looked so different from each other.

The first girl I saw looked to be in her early twenties. She had brown skin, was about 5'5, and had violet eyes. She looked to be wearing a dark blue school uniform, with a skirt that ended just above the knees that matched the color. Over the school uniform, she was wearing a bright purple cropped jacket with golden buttons. Under her skirt, she was wearing purple tights that were tucked in to laced, knee length boots. Her hair was black and hung just below her shoulders. From her bangs I could see that had a pink and purple stripe running through it that was off center from her face. She had a look that made her seem the studying type and if I had to guess, she's probably here a lot.

The next girl I looked to was a tall, tanned blonde girl with green eyes. Just by looking at her, I could tell she was a hard working farm girl. She wore a orange, button up flannel with the bottom tied in the front, with the sleeves rolled up just above her elbows. She had blue work pants that were slightly dirty. The pants were tucked into a what looked like brown steel-toed boots. Her long blonde hair was tied near the end of it, with an orange band. And to complete the farm girl look, she wore a old brown Stetson hat on her head.

'I bet she even has the accent.' I mused, moving my eyes to the next girl.

This one looked to be the shortest woman here. She had honeyed skin, stood just over five feet and had bright red eyes. She was wearing a white tank top that had a cloud shooting a rainbow lightning bolt printed on it. Over her tank top was a blue track jacket. She wore Jean shorts that seemed to almost cling to her tanned legs. Her feet were cover with black boots that had wing designs on them. She had the craziest hair I've seen so far, instead of being just one or two colors, she had the entire rainbow on her head. It also seemed like the hair had a mind of it's own, going in so many directions, not even the rubber band that was ment to hold it in a ponytail could do much. Not only that, but on her head was a pair of flying goggles that seemed to fit snuggly on her forehead.

Then next one looked like small animal that was trying to go unnoticed. She had clear white skin, cyan eyes, and stood just around 5'6. She wore simple clothing, a bright yellow dress that was under a blue cardigan. On the front of thr dress was three butterfly went perfect with her look. She wore dark pink tights on her legs and blue flats that match the color of her cardigan. Her hair was a pale shade of rose and was straight until the ends, where it curled. It was strange to look at her, she was a fully grown adult, and yet, looked like a shy child. I put it in the back of my mind and moved to the next girl.

This woman nearly made my heart skip a beat, easily being one of the most beautiful women I've seen in this town, though all of them were beautiful. She had pearly white skin, azure eyes and stood 5'10. She was wearing a white, sleeveless blouse that had a little white bow tied close to her neck. The blouse was loosely tucked into a black pencil skirt that hugged her leg so tightly, I had a hard time believing she could move in that thing. She was also wearing purple tights on her legs, leading down to a pair of four inch black heels. Her hair was a deep purple that reached down to her mid back. Multiple strands of hair curled upwards. She seemed to have some accessories, a silver bracelet one her left hand and a pair of diamond earring on her ears. She nearly sent my teenage body and mind wild, nearly making me blush. But I forced it down with experience and will, moving on to the last girl before it got bad. The next woman was....waving at me, that threw me off for a second before I got back to examining her.

She looked to be the most eccentric one in this room. She had white skin that nearly looked pink, her eyes were cerulean, and looked to be my height, 5'8. She wore a light blue cropped jacket with a white shirt with a pink cup cake design on it. The shirt was tucked into a thick purple ribbon that was tied on her hip. Her lower half was covered with a VERY frilly skirt that had three shades of pink on it. Her legs were bare, unlike her friends, but she wore a pair of blue, lace up boots that went up her calf. On each of her wrist were golden bracelets that seemed to fit perfectly. What really drew my attention thought was her hair. It was just a pink, that was it pink and curly. Though her hair was done in a ponytail, it was still very curly. She let a few strand hang loose and they almost seemed to circle her face.

'A scholar, a farm girl, a athlete, a socially awkward, a fashionista, and a party girl.' I thought, once again noting how different each of them were. 'This sounds like the start of a really bad joke.'

In the five second it took for me to examine all of them, they seemed to be doing the exact same to me. Getting the attention of six women did make me feel slightly uneasy, but I didn't shy away from them. I needed answers and this library seemed to have them. If they wanted me to leave because of a meeting that would be fine. But I needed to find something out before I go insane. Before any further examing went on, a voice called out.

"Sombra!" Called a young, familiar voice. I looked to the side and was surprised to see a familiar girl jump off a couch and run up to me.

"Scootaloo?" I guessed, she didn't look disappointed when she got close to me so I guessed right. I raised my hand to wave at her, unsure how to really greet her. I looked back at the couch and saw three more face I recognized. "Spike, Applebloom, Sweetie Belle?" I called as they rose from the couch, also giving them a small wave.

The three of them gave me polite waves back, looking a little unsure of what to do in this situation. Although they were unsure, Scootaloo took my sleeve and tried to pull me towards the group of women.

"This is him girls." She said, so excited that she didn't even care that her pulling wasn't moving me at all. "The is the guy that saved us in the forest."

That seemed to break then out of their shock. Though before any of the girls could get their words in my vision was suddenly flooded with pink. After a second, I saw blue eyes.

"Ohmygoshohmygoshohmygosh." She repeated, taking both my hands, unintentionally shoving Scootaloo, before I could react and jumping up and down in excitement. "ItsyouididntthinkidseeyousosoonmyameispinkiepieohihavesomuchIwanttoaskyouwhereareyoufromhowoldareyouwhendidyougetherewhatsyourfavoritecakewhatsyourfavoritegam-."

'What the hell is wrong with her.' I thought, so shocked that I didn't even try to get away from her. I couldn't keep up with what she was saying and there was nothing I could do to stop her. Luckily, the tall blonde and the rainbow athlete in, each of them grabbing a wrist and giving a hard pull.

"Pinkie! Slow down!" The blonde said, a thick southern accent in her voice.

'I knew she had a accent.' I thought absent minded from the absolute shock I felt. Forget eccentric, this girl just wasn't normal, the way she was jumping, how fast she was talking. Even now she was bouncing as she gave me a look that said she would find out my secrets. Scootaloo and the younger kids came to my side while the women tried to calm their friend down.

"What was that?" I asked, the shock clearing my system. The kids all looked at me and shrugged.

"That's normal for her." Spike answered, the others nodding along with his answer. I shook my head.

"That's normal for her?" I gasped, watching as she nearly put a hole in the floor from all her bouncing. Once again, all the kids nodded. It took a minute to calm the girl down, though she still had a wide smile on her face.

"I think she's excited to finally meet you." Sweetie Belle said, watching as all of them finally let her go. And it was at this moment that I finally recognized them.

"You're the girls that nearly ran me down." I said, not even realizing that I said it outloud at first until all of their eyes fell on me. All of them, but the party girl, had a blush on their cheeks as they looked at me.

"Yeah, we are." The scholar said, scratching her cheek. "We're really sorry about that, we were sorta in a really bad panic." She explained, everyone else agreeing with her.

"And I'm guessing that panic had to do with these kids right here." I gestured to the kids. They looked up at me and gave me embarrassed looks.

"Yes, dear." The fashionista answered, her voice sounding regal with every syllable that left her lips. "We had been in a panic all day yesterday, trying to find them. We asked everybody in town if anyone had seen them and when we found out they headed into the Everfree forest. We all ran as fast as we could. We saw them at the entrance and were so relieved that we ignored everything else." She finished, looking at Sweete Belle.

"Though, I could have sworn to Celestia that we told them to never go into the forest alone." The athlete added, giving Scootaloo a scolding look along with the farmer, scholar. I watch the kids turn beat red and turn away and from their scolding looks.

"But thankfully nothing terrible happened," The scholar said. "And from what we hear, that would be thanks to you.". Once again, I got that feeling in my chest.

'Damn it, I thought I had enough of this.' I thought, feeling as the warmth filled my body. The other girls looked at me, some of them smiling, the others examining me again.

"So, you heard about all that?" I asked, hoping this wouldn't cause me any problems, they all nodded.

"Not only that." The party girl said, her excitement showing in her voice. I thought back and tried to remember if there was anything else I did, then it hit me.

"You girls went to visit the Cakes after I left." I started, once again they nodded. "Are you all close with the Cakes?"

"Close with them, I live with them." Party girl said, once again getting past her friends and reaching for my hands. I didn't stop her. "The Cakes are like my second family, that why I'm so excited to meet you."

"We all wanted to meet you, sugercube." The farm girl said. "We wanted to thank you for saving the kids, but Pinkie wants to do something more."

"I guess I should start us off then." I said, quickly think in my head something i can say without sounding too suspicious. "My full name is Angelus Sombra, but everyone I knew just called me Sombra." I said, introducing myself taking my hand back from the pink girl and giving a small salute with two fingers.

'Is that something a teen would do?' I thought, looking to everyone to see their reactions. None of them really looked suspicious, fact they almost looked a little relieved, but one of the kids had something to say.

"Hey! Wait a minute!" Scootaloo said, now getting everyone's attention. "I thought you said your name was just Sombra."

"We it is my name, it's my last name. I never said I'd give you my full name." I chuckled, watching her almost puff her cheeks in frustration. The other kids seems to share her feelings, but didn't show it as much as the little tomboy.

"Well why didn't you say your full name in the first place?"

"If I'm being honest, I thought I'd never see you kids again." I admitted. "I thought we would say our goodbyes and not look back, but now here I am, meeting what I assume is your family and friends."

She didn't continue after that, just stared at me with a suspicious gaze. That didnt stay for long though as the party girl made her way to my vision once again.

"Oh, oh, my turn!" She said excitedly."My name is Pinkie Pie. But everyone in Ponyville just calls me Pinkie." She said, I blinked after that.

'Again with the names.' I thought, thinking that the name was both ridiculous and fitting for her. The names in this world was so weird.'

"Thank you so so so so so much for saving my home." She said, looking me in the eyes and giving me a smile so bright and pure that I thought my heart would melt.

"You don't have to worry Pinkie Pie, it was-" I paused, remembering the talk with Mr. Cake. How much me saving his shop ment to him and his wife. And now I was face with what someone who claimed to to also live with the Cakes. "No problem at all." I finished, hoping that would be good for her. It seemed to work as her smile just got brighter.

"I've got so many questions I want to ask you after this." She said before letting go of both of my hands and and moving to the side. I didnt give what she said too much thought, all I would need to do is to be careful with my words. She moved to the side for her friend, the farm girl to walk up to me.

"Mah name is Applejack," She started, I hide a wince at her food related name. "But my friends call me AJ. It's nice to meet you Angelus Sombra." I reached out and took her hand. Just from the grip she had, I could already tell that this girl was very strong. Enough to give me a match in my prime if it was for strength.

"Its nice to meet you too Applejack." I greeted.

"What did I just say?" She said suddenly, her eyes narrowing as her grip tightened slightly. My eyes narrowed as well, ready for whatever might happen. "I told you to call me AJ." She finished.

"Oh," I sighed, grateful that no problem would happen. "But you said that your friends call you that." I said, recalling her earlier statement.

"Sombra, you saves my sister's life, even if we just meet, my family and I will consider you a friend." She explained, her sister smiling up at us. "And from what I hear, you already met our older brother, Big McIntosh." She said, letting go of my hand as I recalled the name she mentioned.

"Oh, Big McIntosh is your older brother?" I asked, both AppleJack and her sister nodded. "I guess that means that I have one less introduction out of the way?"

"Maybe, but I'll have to take you down to our apple farm, Sweet Apple Acres. I'm sure him and granny want to thank you as well." She said.

'I should have guessed that they owned an apple farm.' I deadpanned in my head, watching as she gave one wave to me and guided her sister to the side to wait with Pinkie Pie. The fashionista was the next on to walk to me, her heels clinking with every step she took.

"Hello Sombra dear." She greeted, looking down at me with a soft smile. "My name is Rarity, Sweetie Belle's older sister, and the owner of Carousel Boutique." She said.

"Well it's nice to meet you Rarity." I said, extending my hand to shake hers. Her eyes narrowed as I did and she grabbed it and pulled me towards her.

"Oh my goodness dear!" She gasped as she examined my sleeve. "Whatever happened to your clothes?"

"What's wrong with them?" I asked, as I let her go and examined myself.

"They're filthy."

Well she wasnt wrong there, my clothes did have some dirt, and the occasional stain here or there. And my cloak probably had the worst of it, being completely covered in dirt from when I fought in the forest. But it didnt really bother me, it was the only set of clothes I had, and I didnt really have much time to clean myself from when I arrived here to now.

"Well, there's not to much I can do now." I said, shrugging at her while she examined me.

"Do you have no extra clothes?" She questioned, looking up from my clothes to me, I shook my head. "Well that does it then."

"What?"

"I'm going to make you a brand new set of clothes dear." She answered, I stood blinked at her statement.

"You'll what?" I asked dumbly. "Why would you do something like that?"

"It will be my way of saying thank you for what you did." She answered, beckoning Sweetie Belle towards her, Sweetie then left my side. "If it wasnt for you, I probably would never able to see my little sister again. So me making you extra clothing will be the very least I can do dear."

I thought about her offer for a second, think on if I would truly need more clothes. It wasn't something that I really needed, but I didnt want to stay in the same sweaty clothes if I could avoid it. After all, I might be traveling after I get the information I needed, and I didnt want to stick out just because of dirty, smelly clothes.

"Okay then Rarity," I nodded. "I take you up on that offer, I'll just have to scrape up some money first an-"

"Oh don't be silly dear." She interrupted, pulling her sister to the side and waving her hand towards me. "I wont charge you a single bit for the clothes. Just show up to my boutique and I'll do the rest."

"What? Rarity I cant do-"

"Forget about it." A voice interrupted, I looked and almost missed the tuff of Rainbow hair below me. I looked down and looked at the tan girl with a raised brow.

"What do you mean?"

"Rarity can be really stubborn when she chooses to be, and when it happens, not too much we can do about it." She explained, I didn't try to go any further with that and watched as she extended her hand. "My name is Rainbow Dash, the fastest flyer in Equestria." She said, her voice taking on a tone of confidence.

"Really?" I raised a brow to her. "Is that proven?" She smirked as I asked that.

"Yep." She replied, no signs of boasting or arrogance, just confidence. I nodded my head to her.

"Nice to meet you then Rainbow Dash." I said, giving her my hand and a firm shake.

"You too kid." She said, making my eye twitch in irritation. "Though from the way Scootaloo talked about you yesterday, it feels like I've meet you already."

"Oh," I said, surprised by what she said. "Are you Scootaloo's sister?"

"She's not my sister." Scootaloo interrupted, suddenly in between the both of us. "I'm Rainbow Dash's number one fan though.".

"Oh, so you have your own fan club too huh?" I said. "You must be the real deal then."

"Of course I'm the real deal, I've got no reason to lie." She said, almost looking offended, before shaking her head. "We're getting off topic, I really appreciate you saving my number one fan, but her aunts' want to thank you personally."

"I'll try to meet them if I can, but no promises." I said, Scootaloo looked somewhat deflated, it almost pained me to see it before a thought came to mind. "Though, I might be able to do it tomorrow."

"You can!" Scootaloo said excitedly, perking back up, I nodded to her.

"Sure, I've already got a lot to do tomorrow, one more wont kill me. I just need a guide to help me."

"Oh! Oh! I can, I can." I heard Pinkie shout on the side. "Ive lived here so long, that I know it like I know my kitchen. We can talk while I show you around town to! Oh my goodness, I have to get all my questions ready." She said, before sticking her hand in her hair and producing a note pad and pen.

"Uh...okay." I blinked when I saw that, trying to understand how she was able to produce the supplies from her hair. I felt a hand pat my shoulder, and saw Rainbow Dash shake her head.

"Just don't question it too much, it will save your brain." I didnt answer, just nodded as she walked towards her friends.

The next one to come was the scholar, but she wasn't alone when she came up. Slightly behind her was the shy woman with the yellow dress. Spike seemed to know them, as he met them halfway and went beside the shy women.

'She looks like she's going to have a anxiety attack.' I thought, watching them stop in front of me. 'Maybe I should try to look nicer. I nodded to myself, thinking of ways I could go about making myself seem less intimidating.

"Hello there." I said, facing all of them with what I assumed was a soft smile. It probably didnt look as good as I thought it did. Both Spike and the Scholar cringed when I smiled and the woman damn near fainted. "Is it that bad?" I sighed, they didnt answer, just nodded.

"What was that about?" Spike asked, I sighed once again, crossing my arms.

"I thought I'd try to smile, put someone at ease." I explained, they seemed to catch my meaning and they all gave smiles of their own.

'Oh sure, show off wont you.' I thought, remembering all my acting from years before. 'I used to be able to pull off that smile all the time, what happened?

"You didnt need to do that." I heard the Scholar say, I looked to her and she continued to talk. "This right here is Fluttershy." She gestured to the woman behind her. She walked slightly around her friend until she was at her friend's side.

"Hello there." Fluttershy said, giving me a smile and a wave. "Its very nice to meet you." She finished. She didn't seen like the social type so I only waved back and gave my attention to the Scholar.

"My name is Twilight Sparkle, I'm the resident librarian here." She said, and I had to keep my eyes from widening.

Twilight, this is the girl who was suspicious of me.' I realize, berating myself for not coming up with it sooner. But with so much going on, last night's small talk eluded, only remembering the name that Spike threw out. 'I'll need to watch my words around these girls.'

"So I'm guessing one of you is Spike's guardian." I questioned, gestering to the child with a jut of my chin, Twilight nodded.

"Yes, Spike is my assistant." She said, stepping forward and letting spike and Fluttershy have their own conversation. "I truly want to thank you for what you did, I wouldn't know what to do if you hadn't been there to save him when you did."

"I'd like to think that anyone would do what I did if given the proper chance." I said, gestering to the growing group. "Though, I still don't understand why those kids were out there in the first place. They told me something about cutie Mark's, but I still dont understand much of it."

"Yes, Spike did mention that you told them no magic is used where you come from or that you had no cutie marks." She sound skeptical as she said that. "I wanted to ask you a couple questions about yourself actually.". All conversation had died after she said that, and I once again had everyones attention.

"Yeah, Scootaloo also said some interesting things to last night." Rainbow Dash said, her eyes now taking on a accusing look. "Told us that you didn't just save them from any regular animal, you saved them from a pack of full grown timber wolves."

"I thought you said that where you came from, no one had cutie marks." Rarity added, now looking at my hands, I tried to cover my left hand, but it was too late. "I've seen enough of them to know that that mark on your hand dear is a cutie mark."

Slowly, the others started to add their own questions, except for pinkie, who was still writing on her note pad.

I wanted to scream as the questions started to come in . I had totally forgotten that I had mentioned that to the little snitches yesterday and now that I had, it was coming back to bite my ass.

''I got to think of a way out of this." I wasn't ready for this, I never thought I would have to explain myself to anyone while I was in this town and I hadn't thought of a real story to tell anyone who would question me.

"I would love to answer your guys questions now. But I can't. " I said cautiously, that seemed to slow them down from their rapid fire question. But the look that some of them gave me was saying that I'd better have a reason I cant do it now. Even the kids looked like they wanted more answers. I tried to think of some excuse that would get me out of this mess without looking more suspicious then I already am. Luckily, an excuse for me came falling out of the sky, literally. "I have to leave right now."

"Why do you have to leave now." I heard Apple Bloom ask, I pointed my finger towards the large window that was above the large staircase. Everyone followed my finger and saw that outside the now wet window was a gloomy sky.

"I was hoping just check out some books and leave before the rainstorm came in so the books wont get damaged. But it looks like I wont be able to do that anymore." I explained. Rarity gave me a sharp look.

"Do you not have a bag to carry your things darling."

"Not anymore." I said simply, slowly making my way towards the door. "Maybe we can do these questions another time." I turned to make my way out.

"Tomorrow!" I heard Twilight shout, I stopped my exit and turned around. "You're taking going to be doing your tasks all over Ponyville tomorrow and you're already going to go with Pinkie. Maybe all of us can join you tomorrow and continue." She seemed like she was just suggesting it, but to me, it was like she was daring me to refuse.

"Oh, I wouldn't mind that, but wouldn't it interfere with all of your day's." I said, sounding as sincere as I could, but hoping it would interfere with their plans. Sadly, I wasn't lucky enough to have two miracles, as they all shook their heads and tried to find a time that would work best.

'damnit all, why cant I just have a day to myself in this world.'

"Okay, it looks like twelve is the best time for all of us to meet. And we'll all meet here again tomorrow." Twilight said, as her hand glowed a light purple and quil and parchment floated to her hands. Though the parchment and quill were in her hand, the aura did fade. Her face seemed to tense up as she wrote down the time and place and when she finished, she floated the parchment in my direction.

'Do you really need to go that far.' I mentally critiqued. 'The meetings tomorrow, who the hell's going to forget something so simple.'

"Thank you Twilight," I thanked as I took the parchment and made my way to the door. "See you girls tomorrow." I called, they all gave polite waves except for Scootaloo who called out when I closed the door.

"Bye Sombra, See you tomorrow."

Twilight POV

I watched as Sombra closed the door on us, all previous thoughts I had on him resurfacing at his little display just now.

"Well, what did you girls think?" I asked to everyone, they all thought for a second, but Applejack was the first to speak.

"I honestly couldn't get a good read on him Twi." She admitted, the others, save for Pinkie and Fluttershy, agreed with her.

"What do you mean Applejack?"

"Well he doesnt seem like a bad guy, but he's hiding something." She elaborated.

"I agree with Applejack," Rarity added, folding some of her hair behinds her ear. "He's definitely hiding something. Some of what the kids told us isnt adding up." Rarity finished.

"You mean his Cutie mark, right?" I asked, and she nodded. "I wasn't able to see it, I actually never noticed until you pointed it out."

"It was the strangest mark I've seen. It just looked like a crudely drawn arrow."

"Oh he told us about that mark." Sweetie piped up. "He told us that it a symbol for 'hunter' or 'huntsman' where he's from.". That seemed to pique everyones interest, mines included

"So that means that he's a hunter?" Rainbow asked, and I can see why. Such a talent was a rare one, even outside of Ponyville. Most people whose made it their job to hunt usually had a talent related to hunting, whether it be tracking, archery, some even had trap making. But for one's special talent to just be described as a hunter, could imply more then just one talent.

"Well that doesn't matter right now, we're going to meet him tomorrow anyway. We can just ask him himself." I said, almost everyone nodded in agreement, but Spike seemed to have something bothering him. So I asked him what was wrong.

"Well, I don't want to think about it, but what if he doesnt show up tomorrow." He said, and some eyes widened at that. Pinkie seemed to nearly take offense in that as she looked like she was about to go on a rant, but I jumped in before she could start.

"I really doubt that he would do that Spike." I said, I could already see the question that was going to come up, so I continued. "I doubt that because if he truly didn't want to do this, I'm sure he would say no. He doesn't seem to know what who he resemble, or that we thought him a suspect of anything. He has no obligation to answer any of our questions or to continue any type of connection we have."

That didn't seem to satisfy him so I continued once again.

"And besides, even if he didn't show show up, I would still be able to find him." That seemed to confuse him along with the rest of the girls.

"What do you mean Twilight?" Fluttershy whispered, a puzzled look on her face. I felt my checks go pink as I said the next part.

"Well, I wanted to make sure that we could track him incase he actually didnt show up. You know, so we could see if he's the real Sombra or just a teen with a similar name." The others nodded along, so I continued. "So when when we decided a time, I decided, just to be safe, i would make sure there would be a way to find him if he didnt show."

"Twilight," Spike said, warily. "You didn't."

"So i gave him a parchment that would mark the next person it touches with a tracker spell."

"Oh my goodness." Spike groaned when I finished, and I my face flushed pink again.

"I just wanted to be sure, besides, I can remove whenever I want." I explained once again, I looked to the girls. "Come on, you can berate me later, let's just figure out what we're going to say."

And with that last statement, we got to our own work.

Author's Notes:

Not too much to say now, its 4 am for me and I only hope that this intro was worth a 8 chapter wait, though there is still more to it though.

Also, I'm going to give you a age for the character just to give you a image of how old they are.

RD- 21
AJ - 25
R - 23
FS - 22
PP - 23
TS - 24

Also, before I go, i was told that I was able to get on the featured page February 25. Thank you guys so much for supporting the story, even though the update are inconsistent I just hope that I can make this story even better then the image I have in my head for it.

That all I have to day, but if you have something to say, you can leave a comment, or dm me if it that important. I'd also appreciate if you guys liked this story, I'd give me a chance to get featured once again. But in the meantime, peace

Chapter 9

View Online

Sombra's POV

'That was too close.' I thought, taking in a deep breath that I didn't know i was holding. I felt goosebumps rise along my skin as I took in a deep breath, letting the little bit of adrenaline I had leave my system. It was hard to keep my composure when I was in the face of so much suspicious without any story to go with me, but thanks to the rain, I was able to avoid the questions.

"At least I have some time now." I mumbled, crumpling up the piece of parchment Twilight gave me and throwing it in a nearby trash can. I walked down the library's stairs and watched the people around me as I made my way to my little bridge, many of them running to escape the rain, while others opened their umbrellas and moved slightly faster. I also saw some of the winged folk fly up into the sky and fly in the same direction.

'I need to cover up.' I thought, feeling to rain slowly start to pick up. And even though I did enjoy the cold feeling the rain gave me, I didn't want to be sick. So with cold, wet fingers I begun to try and undo the knot that held my cloak at my waist.

As soon as I got the black fabric off my waist I unfurled it with a few swings and just looked at the cloak. I remembered the memories I had with it, the missions, and the first time I received it. It was a gift I got from my teacher on what we considered my eleventh birthday. Of course, that was when I realized he didnt put a lot of thought when giving stuff to people. It was way too big for me at eleven, big enough that I just used it as a blanket until I was tall enough to wear it properly. During that time, he would tease me about my height until I grew taller from pure spite.

"God, this thing really has been through a lot hasn't it?" looking at it, I saw how tattered and dirty it really was. The edges were torn and there were multiple holes near the center, not to mention the stains that it had. There was dirt stains, dark grass stain, and even a few red stain I took a closer look at. "Is that blood?"

I wanted to reminisce a little while longer, the the rain had picked up once again and I threw the cloak over my shoulders and the hood over my head. Thankfully I was tall enough for the cloak, but it nearly reached the middle of my calves.

Now that I was covered, I started to think about the story I was going to tell them when I returned for their little tour. I wasn't really sure what I could tell them, I had no idea what towns existed in 'Equestria' or where else I could name. I already told them I was from America and they seemed to believe that it was a small town. But what can I say about where it is. I could keep telling lies and keep letting them believe what they will, but that Twilight girl made it clear last night that she suspected me of being someone from before. It was also one of the reasons why I couldn't skip town, it might just make her think getting these 'princesses' involved is the right thing to do. And that wouldn't exactly do for staying low.

"Though I'm already doing a terrible job of that." I mused, now realizing that saving four kids and a bakery lead to this attention. I didn't regret what I did, though I almost with I skipped town after saving the Cakes. I turned the corner of a crossroad and nearly went face first into a pair of golden guards.

Both of the guards were women who were slightly taller then me. Both had the armor and spear that I've learned to associate with the gaurds. But that was where the similarities ended though. The two of them were almost opposites, one had white hair peeking out of her helmet, while the other had black. The white haired one was pale, while the black haired one had chocolate brown skin.

"'Scuse me." I said, shuffling to the side and trying to move around them. Though the dark haired one stuck her arm out.

"Hold it." She said, stepping in front of me once again and giving me a stern look. Her partner stepped behind her and stood straight. I mentally rolled my eyes at what I knew what was going to happen. "What's a child like you doing out right now in this rain?"

"Trying to get out of it." I said simply, it really wasn't funny to me, but the white haired guard did give a little chuckle. It was silenced when her partner threw her a glare and turned back to me. "I'm I suspected of something?"

"Maybe," she said, before sticking her hand out. "It can be cleared up if you give me your right hand though." I was confused by what she wanted but I compiled, giving her the requested hand and watching her pull my sleeve up to the elbow.

I didnt know what she was looking for, but I could tell she was surprised by what she saw. On my arm were multiple scars that were mostly small, except for the occasional stab wound. I looked at them as well, noting a few that were missing, but I didnt worry about it at the moment.

"Is there a problem?" I asked, though I knew what was wrong. Her partner looked over her shoulder and gasped at my arm, and I had to keep myself from from rolling my eyes. I wasnt going to be ashamed or try to had my scars, there was no point. The dark haired guard snapped out of her shock and let go of my hand.

"Well," she began, clearing her throat. "I guess your not of of the Diamond Dogs." She said, wiping rain that fell on her eyes.

"Yeah, I could have told you that." I said, but her the white haired gaurd shook her head.

"So could a Diamond Dog." She replied, leaning her spear on her shoulder and losing her stiff position. "We've been trying to catch as many as we can, and have learned not to take words at their face value."

"I can understand that." I nodded, feeling the rain started to pick up once again. "As much as I want to hear why you had to check my arm, i want to get out of this rain even more." They both laughed at me this time separating and letting me go by.

"Be careful kid, there are reports that there's Diamond Dogs out tonight." The white gaurd warned, I didn't reply and just kept walking, enjoying the wind that blew against me.

I walked for ten minutes more minutes, before I saw a familiar bridge come into view. And even though it wasnt late, I felt as though I could sleep for a whole year. But as usual, work came first. I was about to go under the bridge, when I felt a familiar feeling in my chest. Though it was the same feeling that I had when I was at the hospital, it was no where near as strong, it was almost faint, but I felt it. Not only that, but now I knew what this feeling ment after the last time this happened, it was fear.

I looked around to try to see where the fear was coming from. I felt the feeling in my chest stir again, this time pointing me in across the bridge. I don't know why but I felt like I needed to run to where it was, feeling that if I didn't, it would disappear. So I did just that, I ran across the bridge and down a empty street.

I don't know how long I ran or where I even really ended up. But all I knew was that who ever was making this fear was close. I reached a empty alley that was between two abandoned shops. I was unsure if the feeling in my chest was right in its direction, but when I listened to the noises in the alley, I knew that this is where the fear was.

"You gave us a real run just now didnt you." A deep, accented voice said. I walked slowly down the alley, passing overflowing trash and smashed cardboard, reaching the end and end and peaking around the corner at the end. There was a six people in the alley, all of them looked like they were in their late teens, and were wearing dark clothing that was covered in mud, and wearing bandanas around their faces. All except for one in the middle, looked completely different then the others

He was turn away from me so I didn't see his face, but from what I could tell, he looked like a greaser. He was wearing loose fitting black jeans with a black leather jacket that had a spiked collar, on his feet looked like black steel toed boots. His black hair looked like it was slicked back with enough gel to put Pauly D to shame. What stood out to me was the design on back of the jacket, two D's that were cut into the jacket that had mirrored each other, the arches crossing to where they overlapped and creating a small space in between them. In the middle of the space was what looked like a diamond that would have shone if not for the rain. I wondered who these people were for a second, before remembering the warning the gaurd gave me as I left.

'Diamond Dogs' I thought bitterly, wondering what it was that brought them here. It wasnt long until I found my answer.

"You....Sure this is her...Dirk." Another teen said, this one wearing a dark green bandanna. All of then seemed to be catching their breath now that they weren't running. The guy with the leather, Dirk, answered.

"Of course I'm sure, the boss made sure that I knew who she was." He responded, walking forward to whoever it was they were blocking and reaching out. I heard a gasp and felt the fear increase before he answered without turning around, I saw a girl with pink hair with a white swirl going through it. "Pink and white hair, blue eyes, and her mark," he reached down, ignoring the girls pained gasp and sob, "a little crown. This is his daughter alright." He finished, gripping even harder as the girl struggled to try to break his hold.

"P-P-Please!" The girl gasped, stopping her struggle and closing her eyes in pain."I'll give you what ever you all want, just please, don't hurt us anymore." She begged, sobbing loudly.

'Anymore? I thought, taking a closer look at the girl, she didnt look injured in anyway, but she did look terrified. 'wait! Us?'

That was when i saw the other girl, this one with silver hair. She was laying flat on the ground with her back towards me. Though I couldn't see exactly what happened to her, I could tell that she was still breathing. Though she was still alive, that did nothing to relive the anger that I felt in my chest.

I didn't know what I was going to find when I was guided here by fear, I didn't know what I was going to do when I found these three in a alley, I didnt know what I was going to do when I saw the purple haired girl crying. But I knew what I was going to do now. I reached to my side instinctively, feeling the cool metal of my mask as I grabbed it and brought it up. I looked at the slightly dented mask with a cold resolve that fused with my anger. I turned the mask and began to clip it to my face, when I felt the mask settle snuggly on my face, I slowly began to step out of the corner.

"Let me make make one thing clear brat." Dirk said, neither him nor his gang noticing me. He used his free hand to take a hold of the girls face and forcing her to look up to him. "We need you alive for our own reasons, but the boss didn't say anything about you being in good health. So unless you want to end up like your friend there, you're going to keep your mouth shut. Got it?" She didn't speak, she only nodded. "Good." Dirk said.

I began to form my plan as I watched them, taking note of the tight space I was in and the objects around me, my masters lessons coming back to me as I thought.

"Fighting a group of people isn't an easy thing to do." He would tell me in one our lessons after watching me take a thorough beating from a group of boys around my age. "I should tell you right now that if your against a group, the smart and best idea would be running away. But since your a hotheaded idiot that doesn't like good ideas, I'd say you should try to take them by surprise. Most people are pretty slow to react when off gaurd and wont be able to make a good move for awhile. I'm sure you can imagine how scrambled a group would be if caught off gaurd"

And what about after the surprise is gone." I remember asking though a mouthful of blood, to tired to acknowledge his insult. He didn't answer at first, he only gave me a amused grin.

"Well, after the surprise is gone, you fight dirty."

With an idea in mind, I walked forward and picked up a brick from the muddy ground. They set themselves in a sloppy formation with the boss, Dirk, far ahead of the rest of them, too far to help the those behind him if I act fast enough. They all were paying attention to their boss as he was in the process of tying the purple haired girl. I walked until I was right behind the teen who was left alone in the back, and with my mind set, I tapped his shoulder. I smiled under my mask at his surprised look as he turned around to face me.

"Hi there." I greeted happily, before bringing the brick around and smashing his face with it. I surprised myself with my strength, as not only did the brick I was holding completely shatter, but the dog I hit was sent flying towards another two goons. They were caught completely off gaurd, neither of them even turning around, one of them was caught under the dog I sent flying, but the other was only sent stumbling. That was my next target.

Recovering from my shock I crouched down and grabbed a hand full of mud before taking off at a sprint. The dog recovered faster then I thought he would and he turned around, drawing rusty shank from his trousers and immediately pointing it at me. I was ready though, and shoot my hand out towards him. He was still to far for me to punch but that wasnt what I was trying to do.

"Agh, fuck!" He yell, hunching over as he began rubbing at his eyes, trying to clear them of the mud that I threw at him. The hand that held the knife began to wave in front of him, looking for a target that wasnt there. When I finally got close enough, he began to shell up, protecting his face and throat. But I didnt go for either of them, instead I swung my leg towards the inside of his leg, I heard a sharp snap come from it and a howl of pain from the teen. I didnt let him suffer though, grabbing the shaggy hair on top of his head before he fell and slammed the back of his head into the building next to us, knocking him out cold. I was once again surprised at the strength.

I quickly turned around and watch the teen that was knocked down push is friend off of him and get back up. I didnt give him the chance.

I ran, the dog noticed and tried to shoot to his feet, but he was too late. When I reached him I swung my leg and deliver a soccer kick straight to his cheek. The kick, like most of my hits, had sent him flying down the alley back to where I came from and slamming against the wall. Unlike most of the hit, I began to worry at whether I killed him or not.

"Who the fuck are you?" A calm voice said, unturned around and finally was able to get a good look at Dirk. He, unlike the others, was a adult that looked to be in his twenties. He had pale skin and muddy brown eyes. He had face that showed he's fought before, with a jagged scar on the right side of his lip and a crooked nose, showing it was once broken. He still had a firm grasp on the girl, which had thankfully stopped crying.

"Don't know why I should tell you that." I said, taking a deep breath and fixing my cloak.

"Do you know who you're messing with kid?" He said, the other boys starting to gather around him as he spoke. "You're messing with the Diamond Do-"

"Listen." I growled, feeling anger rise at him calling me kid. "I'm not in the mood for humoring you or your gangs little power play. Kidnapping children, you lot must have no shame. You all are pretty young, so I'm going to tell you this while you all still have your legs."I pointed towards the girl. "Leave the girls, take your boys, and get lost. Otherwise I'll make what I did to your boys look like mercy to you."

Dirks eyes narrowed as he took in my threat, and he looked like he was about to lunge at me along with the other two. I felt my anger rise in my chest as he looked me in the eyes. Something in my mind telling me that they werent worthy of my time. And as the anger in my body began to rise, he tossed the girl aside and he began to take a stance.

It was a wild stance, with his legs were spread wide and his hips were set ready to take any blow that came. But instead having his hands up to protect his face, he kept them at his sides close to his hips and open. His hands looked more like claws the way he held them. I was about to call him out on his stance, ready to criticize him, but then his hands began to change. They started to glow grey at first, looking like his hand was surrounded by the rain water that fell around us. But then the glow started to become more solid, now looking similar to the translucent wings that were on some peoples backs. But instead of wings, sharp, grey claws appeared over both of his hands.

I gapped for a second, not expecting the man to have anything like this. The other dogs did the same thing, only difference being that they had smaller claws and different shades of grey to their claws. But once again, the anger in my body came back with a vengeance. I gave them the chance to run, the chance to save save himself and this is what he does. Threaten me with their claws. I felt a feeling in my chest rise along with the anger, wanting so desperately to come out and manifest. But there was no way for it to come out, not in anyway that I knew. The feeling started to hurt, it was bad enough that it sent me kneeling.

"Too late to be shitting your pants now." One of the unnamed ones said, mistaking my pain for regret. I didnt say anything back, in too much pain to think straight. I heard them walk towards me, taking slow, cautious steps.

'It hurts. I thought, gripping my chest. 'what's going on? How do I make it stop?'

"Release it shadow, A familiar voice answered. I gasped and put my hands to my head, the pain intensifying as he spoke.

"How?" I groaned softly, my face touching the muddy ground.

"How you ask." The voice chuckled as though he heard a child ask a obvious question. "As if I didnt just tell him. This is something you must do yourself Shadow, not something I interfere with yet. In order for me to grow, you must learn"

I mentally cursed the voice at his ominous answer, what the hell does he mean by release it? And for him to grow? I shook my head and got to thinking. He told me that I I to release what was inside me. It sounded like such a simple way to relieve myself, yet I had no idea how.

I felt a pair of hands grip my cloak and begin to lift me up. When they finally got me up they ripped my hood away and left me to face Dirk, I still had my mask on but he didnt look interested in that. He had a smirk on his face that promised me pain for as long as it could last. He spoke, but I couldn't hear him, the pain blocking all other senses.

"Don't let these miserable mutts do as they please to you.". The voice said, sounding more demanding this time. "Release my magic and shows these mutts my power."

I decided would try to do as he told me, figuring that anyway I could think of wouldn't work. So I closed my eyes, ignoring Dirk as he lifted his claw to me. I tried to reach into my body, seeing if I can feel that feeling in my chest. After a second, I felt something, it was that same feeling that I felt all day, the river. Though right now it felt more like a raging inferno then the cool water I felt earlier. I tried to pull on it, but that wasnt working, so I then tried to push, again it didnt work. I tried to call on the voice again, to hopefully give me some help, but it ignored me, leaving me to suffer.

I felt the punches and cuts that Dirk gave me with his claws, but compared to the agony in my body, it was nothing. I continue to push and pull on the fire, frustration building as nothing I did worked. The frustration turned to anger, adding to what I already had. Every second I tried only added to my anger, until I felt it reach a bottleneck. A point where it couldn't rise anymore. But that didn't stop my anger, it only increased the pain, and after enduring the agony, I couldn't handle it any longer.

I screamed......and then the world went black.

Celestia's POV

Canterlot

'How boring.' I sighed mentally, bringing the tea that I had to my lips. Today had turned out as most days usually do. I wake up, I have breakfast, I meet up with nobles who always complain but never solve anything, have lunch, repeat with the nobles, and then switch shifts with Luna.

Right now, I was in the middle of settling a request between two noble mages, Stuffed Pockets and Diamond Glow, both of them thinking that they would have a better chance at getting what they want, a new opera house where our civilian housing is.

"Again Princess, this new opera house can bring Canterlot another way to collect more money for its betterment." Stuffed said, once again pointing out how this opera house can change canterlot.

"The first opera house we built is doing just fine on it's own Stuffed." I explain trying not to roll my eyes at the man. "Not only that, but wanting to build it where our citizens live is going to cause more problems then just us getting the materials and money together."

"We've already taken the citizens into account if your worried about that Princess." Diamond chimed, looking as though she had been waiting for me to bring this up.

'Oh dear.' I sighed, preparing myself to listen to what is sure to be the list of ways to convince the citizens.

That was until I gasped, feeling a surge of magical power so strong that I dropped the tea cup I was holding. I stood up suddenly and nearly ran to the exit.

"Princess!" Diamond gasped, also standing from her seat, not being skilled enough to feel the power that I was feeling.

"I'm sorry you two, something came up abruptly and I must attend to this matter." I walked past the both of them. "I will try to schedule another meeting with you as soon as I possibly can, but this matter can not wait."

I walked out the door before I could get a reply, not care if I did or not. As soon as the door shut, I grabbed the nearest gaurds attention.

"Tell my senechal to cancel all meeting and to accept no more until further notice." I started, the gaurd only saluted and ran off. With that done, gathered my magic to prepare a teleport to my sister. I was interrupted but a zapping right next to me. I looked and saw Luna, still dressed in her pajamas, looking as though she was lost for a second until her eyes settled on me.

"Sister!"

"Luna," I snapped my finger and in an instant, Luna wore more formal attire. "I take it you feel the power as well."

"I did sister," she nodded, not minding the sudden outfit change. "He has returned Sister."

"No he hasn't Luna." I said, feeling the magic as it spread even farther. "I can feel it, its different then his magic."

"How so Celestia? This magic seems so similar, I cant see any difference."

I didn't answer her immediately, in true I couldn't see much difference either. It was such a strange occurrence, who ever was making this power surge is someone with potential. Whither or not that potential was good has yet to be seen.

"This magic is not corrupted by dark magic, not like his was." I said, not trusting my own words, and by the look Luna had, she didn't either. "Let's go to the balcony, let see if we can find where it's coming from." Luna only nodded and we both gathered magic, and with a release, we appeared on the balcony.

I heard Luna appear besides me a second before I did. Immediately we opened our senses again and traced where the magic was coming from. As it turned out, we didnt need to use magic sense to see where the magic was coming from. I gasped at what I saw as did Luna.

Where Ponyvile was supposed to be could no longer be seen, as right above the town, there was what looked like a blanket of shadow in the sky. The shadow was so thick that not even the surrounding lights could pierce the darkness.

"Celestia, is that what I think it is?" Luna asked, wonder and awe in her voice as she looked at darkness, which had begun to recede.

"I believe it is little sister." I answered, now knowing for a fact that this was not the work of the shadow mage. "Its an eclipse aura."

"But how, I thought that there was no more of their kind anymore." Luna asked. "Especially those of true shadow magic."

"I don't Luna, but what I do know is that we must find out who it is." I told her, watching the eclipse shrink and crack before me. Without saying a word, Luna and I had given each other space to bring out our wings, and with out a second thought, we took off towards Ponyville. Towards the new Umbral mage.

Author's Notes:

You know, I'm really having a hard time writing some parts of my story. Like the fight scene, I know it was brief, but that was the impression that I was going for. I wanted to show that Sombra doesn't mess around when he fight and not afraid to fight dirty. To me, that how anyone would probably fight if their life was constantly on the line. That's probably the only problem I had with this chapter.

Now for Sombra, you can probably tell that he's not so good at laying low at this point. It's kinda like those time travel move where they're not supposed to mess with the last but they do anyway, it's kinda like that and to me as the writer, I think it's pretty funny.

This is probably one of my favorite chapters to write and I hope you guys enjoyed. If you did, how about a like, I'm really trying to get featured again. If you didnt, tell me why with constructive criticism and I'll see about fixing it. That's all I have to say right now, thank you guys, peace.

Chapter 10

View Online

Sombra's POV

*beep**beep**beep*

'Ain't that a familiar sound.'

Before even opening my eyes, I already knew where I was, or at least what building I was in. My eyes opened, before immediately shutting, not used to the brightness of the room yet. After blinking a couple of time and clearing my eyes, I looked around the room I was in and sighing. I was in a god damn hospital.

"I can't believe this." I told myself, I haven't been in this world for more then two days and I already found myself in a hospital. I wanted to sigh and rub my face, but found that I couldn't. "What the hell."

I looked down and saw a sight that I was also familiar with. I found myself strapped to the bed with thick leather straps. It wasn't as worrying as one might have though, given my profession. But what was concerning was how many straps there were.

"That cant be good." I observed, looking around once again, trying to see if there was somebody in the room that could get me out of here. Sadly there was no luck, the room being empty, even from another patient. "Can I get some help here?"

Only answer I got was the constant beeping of the heart rate monitor next to me. I wondered how long it would take for me to get help, but I decided that I didn't want to wait that long. I looked at both of my hands and found what I was looking for. On my right hand was a pulse oximeter, and though my hands were bound, all it to was a couple of good flicks of my wrist and it was knocked off. My heartrate monitor immediately flatlined.

After that, it took less then ten seconds for me to hear the rapid footsteps of someone running. Not soon after that, the door burst open with two people, one of then I immediately recognized.

"Oh Hello Nurse Redheart." I greeted, Redheart and what I assumed was a doctor. They both looked at me from the door, surprise written across both their faces as they looked at me.

"Sombra?" Redheart said dumbly, confusion lacing her voice as she began to walk up to me along with the doctor. "You're awake?"

"I am," I answered, then jutted my head towards the straps. "I also seem to be tied to this bed."

"We're sorry about that young man." The doctor apologized, jumping to my side and pulling up a small "But before I release you I need to check you, make sure you're feeling alright."

"And how would you be doing that?"

"Im going to do a standard procedure as well as ask you some questions. Its mostly to see how your feeling, you've had a couple of incidents while you were asleep and we dont want the same thing to happen to you while awake." He explained, pulling a notepad and clicking a pen. "Are you ready?"

Thankfully, the check up didn't take long, and the questions weren't too bad. Just the typical 'how are you feeling', 'are you in any pain' and the such. After the final question, both redheart and and the doctor, who's name turned out to be Dr. Horse, started the process of unstraping me.

"Now that we're done with the standard procedure, I want to ask you a very serious question." Dr. Horse said, his tone serious as he begun to undue the straps around my torso. "Are you being abused?"

I was so shock at the question that I couldn't even answer him, not at first. I just laid there and stared at him.

"What the hell kind of a question is that!?" I shouted, Dr. Horse and Redheart flinched at my sudden volume. I winced as I realized how loud I was as well. "I'm sorry, but that was kind of a random question."

"Is it dear?" Redheart asked, getting back to working on my straps. "We got a look at your body to see what happened to you. Have you seen what your own body looks like, other then what we had to stitch back together, you look like you fought a manticore and barly escaped."

I looked at her in confusion for a second before looking back at myself. They had taken all of my clothes and left me with a blue hospital gown. The short sleeved gown had only reaches as far as my elbows and went down to my mid calf, exposing the multiple scars that were on my arms and legs. And seeing as they had to get the clothes off of me, they most likely saw the scars over the rest of my body.

"No," I sighed, closing my eyes as they took off the strap on my torso. "I'm not being abused by anyone Dr. Horse."

"Are you sure?" Dr. Horse asked, his eyes meeting mine. "If your worried about your abuser coming after you if you confess, we have ways to keep you safe."

"You have nothing to worry about Sombra." Redheart said, her eyes filled with concern and worry. "You'll be safe, just tell us who did it."

'Oh god, this again.' I've been through this song and dance plenty of time when I was back on Earth. When I would need to go to the hospital, people would think I was getting abused by my master. At first i though it was funny and went along with it, the old man spent a night in jail for that, but as I got older and visited more hospitals, I got more annoyed. Now I was having to go through it all over again becau-

My mind went blank for a second, trying to remember what exactly happened to me. I remember I was walking into a dark alley, I saw a group of Diamond Dogs surrounding two gi-

"The girls!" I exclaimed, my hands shooting up but the bindings on them preventing them from going higher then a couple inches. For the second time, both the nurse and doctor flinched. "I-I don't remember a lot of what happened to me before I came here. But I know there was two girls in the alley I was in. Are they safe." They looked confused for a minute, before taking on a distant look. Then Redheart snapped her fingers.

"The gaurds who brought you in did bring in two little girls. I believe that it was Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon." He explained, I waited for her to continue, she must have saw the look I was giving her because she smiled. "Their both alright dear, and from what I hear, Diamond Tiara had some interesting things to say about you." She continued to smile, though the after a second, it faded slightly. "Mostly what you did to the Diamond Dogs."

"Well I couldn't just let them take those kids." I said, sounding a little defensive. "Is there going to be problems with this later on."

"No, actually." Dr. Horse jumped in. "Diamond Tiara, one of the girls you saved, was able to excuse you of any charges by telling the gaurds what happened. Not only that, but as we all know, those hooligans are always causing trouble for our town. I'm sure it will be the talk of the town that they got what was coming to them, even if it was only a small group."

"That's great." I chuckled, taking in a deep breath as Redheart pulled the strap from my chest.

"Sombra," I looked over to Redheart. "Do you remember what exactly you did to that group?" She asked, folding the strap and setting it to the side.

"Well I know that I fought three of them before I was knocked out by.... something." I recalled, my memory was still somewhat hazy from the night before and it was a little concerning.

"So you dont remember much?" She asked, I nodded.

We didn't talk anymore after that, I just let them take the last of the thicker straps that held me down. I waited for them to start on the straps on my wrist and ankles, but they made no to remove them. "Aren't you forgetting something." I said, shaking the chains I wore, but they just gave me a nervous smile.

"We cant remove those." Dr. Horse said nervously.

"What do you mean you can't remove them?" I asked, confusion in my voice. "Aren't you the one who put them on me?"

"We only put the leather straps on you dear." Redheart jumped in, calmly explaining what happened. "Your body would convulse at random times, and you were so strong that the nurses couldn't hold you down. So we needed those to hold you down to not injure your self and reopen your wound. Those chains were put on by someone else."

"And that is?"

"Well, it would probably be better for you see them for your selves. They are here waiting for you in the lobby, along with her student and friends."

I didn't give a response as both Dr. Horse and Redheart walked out of the door, just laid back in the bed with my arms and legs still bound. I looked at the chains, noting the symbols that were all over the chains and cuffs.

'These look oddly familiar. ' I thought, but I decided not to worry about it, they would hopefully be off soon and I wouldn't need to worry about them. I looked around and saw a clock on the wall opposite me.

"Three o'clock." I muttered, I thought coming back to me. I didn't know what the exact time it was when I left the library, but I know that when I left the Cakes from the hospital it was close to two, and spent about a hour at the library. So the best case was that I was only out cold for a day, longer for the worst. That got me thinking about more though, such as the fight I had that day. I know for a fact that I had nearly beat all those Dogs. But then something happened to me, that excruciating pain that was inside my body. Then I remember nothing else, no memories of what led me ending up at the hospital. Not only that but I felt as though I was forgetting something else, something that must have been pretty important. A knock at the door snapped me out of my thoughts.

"Come in." I called, as the door opened, I remembered what it was that was so important. It was my meeting with Twilight and her friends. The only reason that came back to me was because all of them were coming through the door, their faces ranging from concern to confusion. Not only that, but it looks like they had two new friends join their group, and my goodness were they beautiful.

The first woman I saw was tall, probably close to 6'9. She had pearly white skin and as well as large magenta eyes. Her hair was a mix of pinks, blues and greens that seemed to wave in a nonexistent wind. She wore a long, elegant white dress that hugged her waist snuggly, leaving nothing to the imagination. The straps of the dress crossed her biceps, looking similar to feather on wings then actual straps.The On her neck was a golden necklace that had a large pendant shaped like the sun. And on top of her head, she wore a golden crown with a large purple gem in the center. Her magenta eyes watched me as she crossed the room, filled with caution and concern, though it didn't feel like it was for my injures.

The next woman was shorter than the first, around 6'4, she was almost the complete opposite of the taller woman. Her skin was a light chocolate brown that contrasted to the first womans white skin. Her hair was was a deep blue that had specks of glowing white, it was like the night sky was trapped in her hair. She wore a short, light blue dress that ended right at her knees with transparent black sleeves over her biceps. Over the dress was a dark blue corset that had a tailcoat attached to it who's color shifted from dark blue to purple. She had a laced choker wrapped around her neck and a small gem in the shape of a crescent moon was embedded in the center of it. Like the first woman, she wore a crown on her head, but hers was black. Unlike the taller woman, she didn't look at me with concern or the like, instead she looked at me with what I thought was wonder.

Twilight, spike, and their friends crowded me, all of them asking questions about my well being and what happened to me, Rainbow was brash enough to ask about my scars, though a quick glare from the others cut that off. I didn't answer them, I kept my eyes on the women that stood at the opposite wall, and they were doing the same. The girls seemed to notice that I wasn't paying attention to them and they followed my gaze. For a ten seconds, no one made a sound, not even Pinkie. It was Twilight who broke the silence by clearing her throat.

"Sombra," I turned my head towards her. "I know that this might not be what you, or any of us, expected today, but I would like for you to meet the co-rulers of Equestria. My teacher of magic, Princess Celestia," She gestured to the woman in black"and her sister, Princess Luna."

"It's nice to meet you." I greeted, throat going dry as I looked at the two women. I couldn't explain it, there was an air about these two that put me on edge, like they were trying to break down my very being. "My name us Angelus Sombra, but everyone just calls me Sombra."

"Sombra?" The younger one, Luna, said, eyes narrowing slightly. "Quite an interesting name you have young one."

"Well, it's not much where I come from."

"Oh, is it a common name where you come from." Celestia asked, head tilting slightly.

"No, not at all." I shook my head.

"Then why is it not much?"

"Well it's a word in a different language." I explained, that seemed to get the others attention. "It just means 'shadow' where I'm from. No one normal would want to name their kids that."

"Well that certainly a first for me, I've only here of the word once, and it was a name that belonged to someone else." Celestia said, her face taking on a dark tone for a fraction of a second, before clearing up and smiling to me. "But regardless, my sister and I have a few questions that we want to ask you. Twilight and her friends also have their own and we figured that we may as well do them together since our questions are so similar."

"Well I'll certainly try to answer," I raised a brow, my feelings from earlier disappear. "But if I can ask, why would royalty want anything to do with me? Not only that, but why do you have me bound bound like a rabid animal?"

Twilight and her friends looked at me as if I just slapped them.

"Sombra, dear, there no need to say it like that." Rarity said, a stern tone to her voice.

"Is there any other way to really say it? I'm chained to a hospital bed and have no idea what going on. I have princess's here that have a sudden interest in me. And I dont remember what happened to me last night. So excuse me for being a little frustrated. " I wanted to say more, but I stopped, berating myself for letting my emotions get the better of me. Especially in front of two princess's. Dealing with royal back on earth was a mixed bag, some were down to earth or really kind while others thought they deserved the world. I hoped that at least one of these two were the former rather then that latter, thankfully they both didn't seem angry at my outburst. In fact, they both had looks of understanding.

"We understand your frustration young man. But before we tell you anything, please let us ask our questions, just so that we know where to start with you." Celestia requested, I saw no lie in her eyes, so I nodded my head. With that, she continued. "I'm told you you arrived here in Ponyville not to long ago, correct?"

"That right."

"Twilight had a chance to tell us about you while we waited in the lobby. Is it true that you come from a town where no one can use magic of any kind?"

"Yes, my people focused on what we can do with out magic." I said, racking my brain on what to say. Because of what happened last night I hadn't been able to think of a cover story, now I was once again caught flat footed thanks to me fighting those Dogs. There was still one thing I could do, but iIreally didnt like having to rely on it. A skill so complex that to use it was to risk it all...Lying.

'I'm really going to have to get by like this.' I thought, remembering my masters words.

"if your going to lie, then you shouldn't make up a full blown story that you'll have to remember later, sprinkle the truth in there. There isn't a better lie then the one that has the truth."

"And you yourself have never used magic?"

"That's correct."

"What of your parents? Were they capable of using magic?" Luna asked, taking a step closer.

"I don't know." I shrugged.

"You dont know because you never saw them use it, or you didn't know what it looked like." Twilight questioned, head tilting to the side, I shook my head.

"No, I dont know because I've never met them, I'm an orphan" That definitely got a reaction. Fluttershy, Pinkie, and Rarity gasped, Rainbow and Applejack winced, and Twilight, Spike, and the princesses only widened their eyes. After a second, their faces shifted to sorrow and pity.

"I'm sorry to hear the little one." Luna said, looking around awkwardly as she tried to think of a way to move on.

"There's no need to be sorry, they abandoned me when I was really small, I really never knew them." I said, trying to show that I wasn't hurt by it. That might not have been the right words to say. The mood in the room becoming even worse. Rarity even went as far as to wipe away tears from her eyes with a handkerchief she got from... somewhere, and handing two more to Pinkie and Fluttershy.

"That's so sad." Pinkie sobbed, blowing into the handkerchief and trying to hand it back to Rarity. Through her tears, she gave the offending handkerchief a small disgusted look before using her magic to take it.

"How did you survive, surely you had someone to help you?" Fluttershy asked, wiping any leftover tears she had.

"Or maybe an Orphanage?" Twilight jumped in, everyone seemed to agree with that, but they looked to me for confirmation.

"Well I was in a orphanage when I was younger," I said, looking off and giving it some thought, the girls looked relieved. "but they kicked me out for extremely bad behavior." I ignored the gasps again.

"Bad behavior?!" Applejack asked. "What can be so bad that they'd just throw you on the streets?"

"Well, I would always be breaking stuff."

"That's it?" Applejack scoffed, anger on her face as she moved back. "Ain't nothing a child can break that can't be fixed with duct tape and time. You shouldn't have been thrown out on that alone." All the women seemed to agree.

'Can't fix a skull with duct tape.' I remembered the times I would get into fights with the other kids at the orphanage, the last one being the most brutal as well as the last straw. I didn't say that out loud though.

"But you said that you were picked up by someone." Spike, who had been quiet until now, chimed in. "You told us when we were asking each other questions."

"So you were picked up by someone?" Fluttershy asked, getting over her shock. "Where are they, we didn't see anyone else with you last time."

That question got me to wince, it had been a long time since I actually thought about him. Sure, his lessons always came to mind and would never leave, but I never actually gave the man any thought. I looked at the women as they looked back at me, wanting me to tell them were my guardian was.

"He's.... gone." I said, they looked confused when I said that, looking to each other for answers. The only ones who didn't look lost were the princess, who looked at each other like they both fucked up.

"M-Maybe we should mov-"

"What do you mean he gone Sombra?" Spike asked innocently, interrupting the Celestia, the women finally seemed to catch on, but before they could stop, I started to talk.

"He's dead, Spike, It happened about a year ago." I lied, watching his eyes go wide. There was a pain in my chest when I finally said it, which was strange. His death actually happened over forty years ago, and it was no surprise when it happened. We had both prepared for each others eventual death, so when it happened, I barley felt anything. But right now, I had emotions running rampant.

'Seriously, what the hells been going on with me.' There was a pain in my chest and small tears in my eyes, all ready to fall. I blinked them away, I tried to wipe them away, only for my chains to stop me. 'Damn it, this is bot something I need right now.'

Because I was so busy trying to not look like a fool, I never noticed the two princess's walking to either side of me. The girls gave them space as they made their way to me, walking to the end of my bed. When both of them reached me, they both put a hand to either cuff and a aura outline their hands and the cuffs. When they let go, the cuffs had released.

"We're sorry that we brought up bad memories." Celestia said, the others agreeing with her. I put rubbed my tears away, covering it up as a scratch. "We just wanted to be sure that you were not corrupted in anyway."

"What do you mean?" I asked, they both looked at each other, to the girls, and then back to each other.

"Girls, I will need time to talk to Sombra alone." They looked shocked at what were told. But before anyone could protest, Celestia raised a finger and turned to her sister. "Luna, can you please ask the staff can spare a room and explain the situation to them. This might be too much for him and may need to be alone."

Luna didnt respond, she only nodded her head and ushered the girls out. Now it was just Celestia and I alone. We stayed quite for a minute, gathering both of our thoughts.

"I have to once again apologize for what we put you through." She said suddenly, her head down as the word left her mouth. I just stared at her, not saying anything.

"Why did you ask me those questions?" I asked, she did answer at first, using her magic to pull a chair behind her and sitting down.

"I'll start with the easier one to explain, about your using magic."

"I already told you, my people dont have magic." She only stared at me before shaking her head.

"Sombra, what do the remember about the night before?" She asked, I raised a brow at her, the pain from earlier disappearing.

"How will that help?"

"Please, just tell humor me." She said, I shrugged and explained what I remember. She nodded along as I told her what happened to me, about the fight, the burning pain, the men using their claws and final about me passing out.

"That all you remember after that?" She asked, crossing her legs and looking me in the eyes, I nodded. "Well then let me tell you what happened after you fainted." I leaned in closer as she took a breath. "After you fainted, you had a large magical surge. Large enough that Luna and I were able to feel it all the way from our castle. Not only that, but you were able to use your magic in a way to take down the rest of the boys who were involved in the attempted kidnapping."

"Really?"I said blankley, not believing a single thing she said. "Me, a guy who never even thought real magic existed until a couple of days ago, was suddenly able to use magic."

"You weren't suddenly able to use magic Sombra, you were always able you use magic, you just never seemed to have enough to actually use it. And your cutie mark is proof enough that you were able to use it" She said, before bringing a finger to my left hand and taping the symbol. "While cutie marks are not exclusive to Equestrians, it is proof that you have magic. Surely you can feel the magic running through your body as we speak, you've probably even developed a form of your magic before your surge."

I thought back on the days that I've been here and she was right. There was something about my body that was not normal, the river. Not only that, but that my ability to sense fear.

'Is this the magic she was talking about?' It was the only change, beside the new body, that was different about me. And I remember how it was that I got this ability to use magic. 'The Shadow Mage.' Though I was more curious than ever tk get to the bottom of this, I wasn't about to tell the Princess. Given everything that I have seen, this man was a real menace.

"So you do feel the magic." She asked, I nodded, but not telling her anything else. But it seems that I didn't need to say anything, as she continued to talk. "Somra, when you released your magic, you didnt just affect your surroundings, you affected the entire town. You had preformed a spell that was though to be lost, you made a eclipse aura."

"What the hell is that." I asked, rubbing my head to soothe the oncoming headache.

"A eclipse aura is exactly what it says Sombra, it is a very powerful spell that is believed to be able to cover the world in shadow so long as the user can use it properly." She looked to me. "That's what you did Sombra, and I have a feeling that you will be able to do so much more."

"I don't even know what I am, what's going on, or what to do, and yet you're telling me to do I'm able to do so much." I chuckled darkly, lost in my head for what felt like the hundredth time since coming here.

"But I know what you are, and what magic you use." She said, a small amount of excitement in her voice.

"Some clarification would be nice, I can't think straight right now."

"Sombra, you are a what's left of a race that is nearly on the brink of extinction, and use a magic that is in a similar situation." She said, taking my hand in both of hers. "You are a Umbrum, a race whose people are able to control both shadows and terrors. The only race who's able to use Umbral magic."

Author's Notes:

Wow, this chapter took a lot out of me, I know I said that it would take a week and that it was slightly longer than that, but it seems that to rewrite this chapter really burned me out. Like, I didnt even wan to finish it for a minute, but thankfully I pull through and got it done. Also, I was able to get myself a new laptop to get me through the rest of the year and , hopefully, many more to come.

Now for the story, I wanted to add more to this chapter, like what the history is and what happened, but I think that would be better left for another chapter later on. I dont know, I'll figure that out later. Theres also Sombra's magic, I'm really excited for the future, when I can write about him using it. I think it will be a excited time in the story and I already have plans.

Before i go through, I want to mention that I might change the first chapter. Not a whole lot, but enough so that it matches the Sombra that I'm trying to write now. I'm not sure if its obvious, but I wrote that when I had no clue how to really write or what I was trying to write. I was just excited to have a story on here. So I just wanted to warn anyone who reads these that that's going to happen.

That's all I have to say, but if you have anything, leave a comment, or a like. I really appreciate what you guys have to say and it's what keeps me going on this story. I hope you all have a good day or night

I'm out

Chapter 11

View Online

Spike’s POV

“I’m sorry Princess, but can you say that again please.” Twilight asked, forcing a chuckle as she did. I couldn’t really blame her either, I couldn’t believe what I was hearing either. And from the looks of the other girls' faces, they were thinking the same thing.

“Angelus Sombra is of the same race that King Sombra was, and from what my sister and I have seen, shares magic that resembles his.” Princess Luna repeated, watching us carefully to see our reactions.

“Yeah, I thought you said that.” Twilight chuckled, once again forcing it from her throat. She took a deep breath and tried to calm herself, wiping her hands along her skirt. Taking one more breath, she opened her mouth to say something.

“What do you mean that Angelus is the same race as King Sombra!?” Rainbow shouted before Twilight could get a word out. Her statement was followed by the other girls asking questions of their own, all revolving around the mysterious teen. I was about to open my mouth to ask a question of my own, until the princess raised her hand to silence us.

“I will answer your questions, but I can’t answer them at once.” She said, lowering her hand, she looked at Rainbow Dash. “To answer your question Rainbow Dash, I mean exactly what I say. Angelus is a descendant of the nearly extinct race, the Umbrum.”

“Who was the Umbrum, Princess?” Twilight asked, her voice laced with both anxiety and excitement. “I’ve read almost every history book that was in the library, both at Canterlot and Ponyvile and they never once showed up. And any book that mentioned the Dark Mage never mentioned his race.”

“That does make sense, as the history of the Umbrum has nearly been wiped completely.” There was a round of gasps as she finished that sentence, but before any of us could ask why, she continued. “Not much is known about the Umbrum, not even my sister or I know enough about them to give a complete description. We don’t have much knowledge about them, but we will share what we know. I will start with how King Sombra came to be and I will ask you to save your question to the end please.” She looked at us as she waited for a response. We all nodded, she did as well and used her magic to pull a chair close to her. We all followed her example and grabbed chairs. When we were all sitting down, the princess waved her hand and a purple mist came out of it. As the mist took shape, mountains began to form in them along with multiple buildings, and then her story began.

“More than 1,000 years ago, the Umbrum used to live in the frigid mountains of the far north. They were a race of warriors that had complete mastery of the shadows and illusion magic that showed one's true fears to them.” Two people appeared in the village, one had shadows crawling around their feet and the other had a sinister face behind them. “They alway kept to themselves, and because of that, not much was known about them. There were more rumors than fact, the main rumor was that their entire race was just living shadow. But even with all the rumors, the one thing that was known was that they took great pride in their strength and magic. So much so that any of their race that was seen as weak would be shunned and castaway.” She paused and looked at us, making sure that she still had everyone’s attention. Everyone was looking at her show and barely breathing, even Pinkie sat quietly as she told the story. “Among the Umbrum, there was a split in their race. The split was caused by them arguing over which aspects of their magic was stronger, their power over the shadows, or their power over terrors.” More people appeared in the village, all of them taking a side next to the two figures in the beginning. All except for one, a child that looked like he was lost. He looked back and forth trying to go to either side of the tribes, each time he was pushed to the side. “Among the two tribes, there was a boy who both the tribes saw as worthless, as he was not proficient in either of the tribes' magic. That boy was Sombra. Though they still took care of Sombra, it was obvious that no one wanted him there. This caused Sombra to seek out power by any means necessary. The search continued on until he was nearly an adult. But eventually, Sombra did find that power in the form of a crystal.” Sombra was shown to be surrounded by trees and snow, walking through the harsh weather with no more than a thin blanket. A red crystal appeared and the teen kneeled to it. “The crystal had offered Sombra limitless power and acceptance of his tribe should he take that power. So he accepted it-”

“Why would he do such a thing? It was obviously a trap!” Pinkie blurted, popcorn suddenly in her hands and shock clearly written on her face.

“PINKIE!” We shouted in unison, causing her to mumble an apology and look back to the show. The image showed the teen surrounded by his people, displaying his magic and its power. The princess cleared her throat and continued.

“As I was saying, he accepted the power and gained only half of what he wished for. As when he returned back to the village and showed sudden mastery of his magic. He was still hated, only for different reasons. The reasons being that the Umbrum knew that the magic he had was nothing of their races. They said it was only shadow magic that's been corrupted by dark magic. The illusions could only work with the aid of an object, instead of evoked by his magic. This of course made Sombra furious, enough so that he began to attack.” All the figures broke out into a fight, all of them attacking Sombra with everything they could. But it wasn’t long before the image showed the outcome of the battle “Now, Sombra was not even an adult, so he should not have even stood a chance against a race of warriors. But the crystal gave him more power than he could ever imagine, giving him an advantage that no one else could match up to. He won the battle, but he did not kill the entire tribe, as some masters and civilians were able to escape. Sombra spent the rest of his years searching for what remained, and for more power. That search had eventually brought him to the crystal empire. Though it is not confirmed, we believe that it is the crystal that is urging him to take over the Crystal Heart to gain more power. This led to him eventually trying to take it over and Celestia and I had to intervene, he was the first of the Umburm that we ever came in contact with, so we were unprepared at first, but with the elements of harmony, we eventually beat him back.” The story finished with the shadowy figure of Sombra looming over the Crystal Empire, waiting for his chance to strike. As the story ended, the princess looked at us.

“Now, do any of you have questions?” She asked, the others, forgetting that we were not in a classroom, raised their hands to try and asked first. The princess gave a small smile at the display and went along with it, pointing to Twilight.

“Why is this history never talked about in any of the books that I’ve read.” She looked as though she just had a revelation with the new knowledge that she received. “I’ve been looking for information about Sombra since the day we fought him and I couldn’t find anything. Not his history, not his magic, not his reasoning, nothing.”

“The reason that the information is not public is because, once again, there is hardly any information on the Umbrum. All the records that we have about them can be put in a single book, and that includes their magic.” She explained, snapping her fingers and producing a leather bound book. The book wasn’t thick, just a couple inches thick, but Twilight looked at it as though it held the secrets to magic itself. “This book specifically, the reason it’s not available to the public is because Umbral magic is a power that can only be used and controlled by the Umbrum. If attempted by anyone else the result can be very bad.”

“How bad can they be?” I asked, pausing as I realized I had said that out loud, though everybody was thinking it.

“There was a group of mages that wanted to attempt using Umbral magic when this book was put together 100 years ago. You all are aware of Sombra’s ability to travel through the shadows, yes?” We all nodded to her question. “Well, a normal mage tried to do the exact same thing. After multiple attempts he succeeded, but he was dead when he came out, with black sludge coming out of every hole known to the human body.” I recoiled at the thought of that happening to someone. “There was another who avoided the shadow aspect of the magic and tried to conjure nightmares. He succeeded, but it affected everyone in the room, and they were all trapped in their own heads. It only took thirty seconds for them to lose their sanity, most killed themselves after a minute, the ones who didn’t begged for it all to end. Putting them to their deaths was a mercy.” She said, solemnly shaking her head as she remembered the horrible memories. And I shuddered at the thought, this power was used on us, and I could only wonder why we didn’t end up like them.

“How was all of this knowledge gained princess?” Rarity asked, adjusting herself on her seat and wiping at cold sweat. “The way you describe it, there should have been hardly anyone left to write it down.”

“If I’m being honest, pure luck. A traveling merchant brought it to the grand library 100 years after the attack to see if the book was worth anything. That merchant got more bits in that one sale than he did after two years of selling.” She chuckled, waving the book in the air. Using her magic, she gave the book to Twilight, and she reached out for it like a baby would a bottle, she even made the grabbing motion. When she finally got it in her hands, she tore into it like a starving wolf to meat.

“I wonder if you’ll ever break out of that habit.” I thought, watching Twilight for a second, before returning to the princess.

“Celestia and I have decided that we will allow you all this knowledge under one condition, Twilight.” Luna said, lifting a finger to indicate the favor. Twilight reluctantly lifted her head from the book, a silent confirmation that she was listening. “That condition is that you must help Angelus Sombra learn his magic.”

No one said anything when they heard that favor. Everyone had different expressions of shock, none compared to Twilight.

“What?!” she yelled, and I couldn’t really blame her. I’ve seen what Sombra could do, and to teach that to someone else so they could do that, it made me nervous. Would it change Angelus and make him like the Shadow Mage, would he stay the same? I didn’t know, and I didn’t want to risk finding out.

“In exchange for this knowledge.” She pointed to the book. “We want you to teach Sombra the magic of his race.”

“That's not the issue princess Luna!” Twilight screeched, shooting up to her feet. “Why should we teach him magic at all Princess? All of us have seen the power that King Sombra has achieved with his magic. Angelus is of the same race, has the same magic, he even shares the same name, and you want me to teach him that very same magic?” I nodded my agreement, and so did the others, with the exception of Pinkie Pie.

“No Twilight, I’m telling you to teach Angelus Umbral magic.” She answered simply. That didn’t really comfort me, and from the looks of it, it didn’t comfort Twilight.

“What's the difference?” Applejack asked. “The way you described it princess, they almost seem the same to me.”

“The difference, Applejack, is that Sombra’s magic was not Umbral magic. As I had said in the story, Sombra’s magic was made different because of the Dark magic he gained from the crystal. Angelus has not been corrupted by dark magic, or any magic if what we heard was true.” She explained, we all nodded along with her, and Twilight finally sat down and took a deep breath.

“How do you know they’re different types of magic princesses?” Fluttershy asked, her soft voice barely making it across the space between Princess Luna and us.

“When I first felt this magic, I thought that King Sombra had returned and he was striking Ponyvile to get to you all. But when we saw the power and felt it, we knew for a fact that this was completely different than Sombra’s.” She looked over to Twilight. “I’m sure you felt the magic surge as well as the sudden darkness that befell Ponyvile yesterday.”

“We all saw the darkness Princess, but we didn’t know what was causing it at the time, we thought it was the storm.” I said, and it was true. Yesterday’s darkness did catch us off guard, but we didn’t really give it much thought. That was until Twilight had started to warn us to get under something. We all listened to her, but we didn’t know what was going on, and neither did she. “We only realized it was magical when we tried to turn on a light. Nothing would brighten the room, not Twilight's magic, my fire, or Applejack’s matches.”

“I expected that,” She said, nodding her head when I finished. “That darkness was caused by Angelus’s magic after he finally released his power. It’s also what confirms that Angelus’s magic is different from King Sombra’s. What Angelus did is mentioned in that book, it is a nearly forgotten spell that I only know because of this book. It is called an eclipse aura, and it is unique to only Umbral mages. It snuffs out any and all light so that the shadows inside the ellipse can be even stronger than they would be on their own.”

As she described it, Twilight opened the book and went to the pages that described their magic and how to use them. She turned the ancient pages carefully so as to not rip them. When she found it, she angled it so that we could all get a view of it.

Eclipse Aura

A spell that affects the world around the mage, casting the area of it into complete darkness. The area of effect depends on the mage that casts this spell, though if a mage is capable of casting this spell, it's almost guaranteed that they will have a large area. Any Umbral magic that is cast in this eclipse will have its strength nearly doubled, and terrors evoked will be harder to break. Any light that is in the eclipse will be absorbed into the darkness (fire will continue to burn, but it’s light will be absorbed).

To cast an eclipse aura, the mage must…

That was as far as I got before Twilight closed the book, and we all brought our attention to the princess.

“Okay, so I’m more comfortable with the idea about teaching him.” She admitted, setting the book on her lap as she spoke. “But I want to ask why we shouldn’t just give him this book and let him learn on his own, and also why me. Why can’t you or Princess Celestia teach him?”

“Celestia nor I can teach him for the same reason that Celestia can’t teach every student at her school of magic. We have too much to do in our everyday lives to focus on teaching an entirely new and foregin magic. Though, don’t get us wrong though, Celestia and I wanted nothing more than to help him learn magic so that we can study it.” She gave a small smile as she said that, showing that she truly meant what she said. “As for why we can’t let him try to learn on his own, we think that letting him learn on his own can be...dangerous.” She looked like she bit into a lemon as she said this.

“Well how dangerous can it be?” Rainbow asked, and I had to agree with her. Sure, when I helped Twilight with her magic, crazy things could happen, but I wouldn’t say they were truly dangerous...most of the time.

She just stared at Rainbow Dash as she said that, before sighing and standing up.

“Allow me to show you how dangerous it can be.”

Twilight POV

We all stayed quiet as we walked down the hospital halls, all of us focusing on not interrupting or bumping into the staff as we tried to keep up with the princess.

“What do you think she’s going to show us?” Pinkie whispered, somehow dodging a nurse she wasn’t looking at as she walked next to us.

“I don’t know Pinkie.” I shrugged, speeding up as Princess Luna turned a corner.

“Maybe she’s going to show us records of how people got hurt with similar magic.” Rarity said, yelping as she quickly jumped out of the way of another nurse's way. “I would make sense, as Umbral magic is supposedly similar to shadow magic.” I agreed with her, but something told me that wasn’t what was happening.

“She is actually close.” I heard Luna say, I faced forward and nearly ran face first into her breasts. Luckly, I managed to stop myself and the others before we had such an embarrassing accident. “As I’m sure you're all aware, the reason that Angelus is here is because he got into a fight with the Diamond Dogs, yes?” She turned around as she asked, walking and talking. We didn’t answer before she continued. “Well, when he released his magic, it showed both my sister and I why that magic belonged to a race of warriors. Umbral magic is almost purely combative magic in the way shadows and terror is used.” We came to a stop at a room that had two guards waiting. They saluted us as Princess Luna stopped at the door, she turned to us and looked down at Spike.

“Is something wrong Princess?”

“I want you to wait out here while we go inside Spike.” She pointed to a seat that was next to one of the guards. He tilted his head in confusion when she said this.

“Why Princess?”

“The people beyond this door have injuries that made some of the nurses here squirm at the sight of them. I believe that one as young as yourself should never see something so horrible and gruesome.” She took a deep breath after she said this, nothing came out of Spike's mouth as he moved to the seat.

I began to get nervous as the Princess turned around, looking to the other girls to see what they were thinking. They looked just as nervous as I was, Rainbow and Applejack looked to be steeling themselves to see what lay beyond the door. Fluttershy was shivering slightly as looked at Luna’s back, Pinkie looked serious as she got ready to step through the door, and Rarity was like me, nervously moving her hand and pulling at her skirt.

“Let us go.” Was all Luna said before she opened the door to the room, we all followed after her. In the room, there were two more guards, all of them standing at attention as the Princess entered. The hospital room looked the same as the last two that we had entered. Only difference being that there was a large curtain in the center. In the room there were three people on beds with handcuffs. All of them had bad injuries, two of them had bandages wrapped around their faces, while the other looked had a large bandage on the back of his head and a cast on his leg. The two with bandaged faces were awake and looked at us, stiffening as they saw the Princess. I relaxed as I saw them, they did have bad injuries, but I expected so much worse.

“Um...Princess” Rainbow started, looking at all the teens in the beds. I could already tell what Rainbow was going to say, and so did everyone else from the looks of it, including the Princess.

“I know what you all are thinking, but before you say anything, why don’t you ask them what happened to them.” She gestured to the two boys that were awake. We all looked at each other, wondering which of us would ask the two injured boys. It seemed Rainbow and Applejack were the only ones willing to ask, walking to the teen at the far end of the room.

“Hey bub,” Rainbow said in a low voice. “Tell us what happened to you.”

“Is she really trying to intimidate him?” I almost wanted to laugh when I heard that, Rainbow Dash standing next to a chained teen. Almost looking like a child next to the hospital bed. I managed to hold it in though, thinking about the situation and how serious it was. The teen glared at Rainbow.

“Suck my-”

“You will answer her question.” Luna interrupted, her tone so icy it made the hair on the back of my neck stand. “If you don’t I will make sure that you never get a wink of peaceful sleep while you are in our prison. I will make them send you back to your little ‘gang’ where they will do with you as they please.”

The threat didn’t sound like much, but it seemed to work on the teen, as he bit down on his pride and opened his mouth.

“That fucking kid is what happened to ushh.” he sneered, his word sounding slurred from his swollen mouth. “He kicked all of our assthes.”

“Did he use magic on you?” Applejack questioned, but the teen shook his head.

“No, he didn’t, he beat all of us with only his fists. That fucker broke all of my teeth with a kick.”

“He hit me with a brick.” the teen on the other side chimed in, wincing as the words left him.

“He also broke Jinx’s leg and skull, he hasn’t woken up since yesterday.” the first teen said, pointing to the unconscious teen. I wondered what Angelus really was capable of now that I’ve seen what he would do to people. Sure, he fought timber wolves out in the forest, but the difference was that he was fighting mindless beasts that had no real thought other than to hunt and eat. Even though he didn’t kill these three teens, something in the back of my mind told me that if he really wanted to, he could do so without a second thought. It was honestly scary.

We looked to Luna, and she looked back at us. She walked towards the curtain in the center of the room. Her magic grabbed one end as she turned towards us.

“This is what Angelus was able to do without magic. Now I will ask you now, are you ready to see what he is capable of when he does have magic? If not, I will allow you to leave right now.” She warned, waiting for any of us to leave at the opportunity. We didn’t move, but the nervousness returned. I looked over to Fluttershy, worried about how she was taking this. She was gripping Applejack's hand like a vice, but it didn’t seem to bother her. The princess took our silence as our answer, and began to move the curtain. “Very well, remember, it was not Angelus that did this, it was his magic that did this.” She said ominously, before quickly tearing the curtain back.

We all gasped, and one of us even screamed, but I didn’t acknowledge who did it. I was too busy staring at what was in front of me to even think about it.

There were three beds on the other side, all of them holding bodies. The bodies were nearly covered in bandages, most of them were stained with blood. All of them had tubes going down their throats and IVs attached to their arms though from the look of their bodies, it was probably the only thing keeping them alive. The skin that was visible was either black and blue from a bruise or had stitches and staples. With so many cuts, I had to wonder how they were even alive. One of the teens' faces was visible and had a bandage covering his left eye and a long cut from his scalp to his chin that was stitched back together. Another was missing a leg completely, along with three of his fingers on one of his hands. And the last one had both of his legs filled with bone nails that had a metal ring circling the ends of them. And that wasn’t even mentioning all of the lacerations that covered his entire body. It made me sick to see what had happened to them, but the thought of how they even lived long enough to make it to the hospital raced through my mind.

Luna pulled the curtain back after a minute, and everyone relaxed. Or they relaxed as best we could, it was really hard to do that after what we saw. Luna walked back in front of us and got all of our attention.

“That is what can happen if Angelus loses control of his magic, or tries to teach himself.” She said solemnly. “ I know that this will be scary, and there are risks that you might not be ready for. Neither Celestia nor I know anything about Angelus, that is why we chained him when we got here, we were not sure what kind of person he was. After seeing these bodies, we were expecting a murder in disguise, hiding his true intentions. Come to find out that he's only a child who lost the only person who cared for him.”

“The way you talked about him earlier,” Fluttershy started, a small amount of anger in her voice. “You talked about him like he was a test subject. And now you talk about him like he’s actually a person.”

It was surprising to hear Fluttershy talk like that, and especially to a Princess. Everyone was surprised by it, including herself, as when the word left her mouth she immediately covered it. Though she did look embarrassed, she didn’t look like she regretted it.

“I-I” Even the princess was shocked by her words, but she composed herself quickly and sighed. “I suppose that I did speak like that about him. I apologise for that, I didn’t mean to make it seem like I was only interested in his magic. I was only excited at the thought of new magic, it’s a rare occurrence to find new magic even in my long lifetime.” She sighed once again and tucked a piece of her mystical hair behind her ear, before looking at all of us. “But I promise you that Celestia and I only want what's best for Sombra. If he continues as he is, he may end up causing an accident that is even worse than what happened to these boys.” She looked like she was going to continue, but a dark chuckle caught all of our attention. We turned around and saw the teen who was kicked in the face chuckling, but it soon turned to laughing.

“Is something funny, young man?” Luna asked, her tone demanding an answer. When he finished laughing, he looked at her.

“I just think that the irony in this situation is funny.” he smirked at her, snickering at Luna's questioning gaze. “Well I was thinking that had that been me in the same situation, magic going out of control and injuring people, I wouldn’t even get a word out before I was locked up. But when someone is important enough, they get off scot free.”

“You know nothing of this situation, boy.” Luna spat those words out, and lumed over the teen. But he didn’t even flinch, he just kept going.

“I know that what happened definitely wasn’t an accident, that kid your protecting and plan to ‘help’ is a fucking monster. Look at what he did to my people” He sneered, pointing at the three behind the curtain. “This isn’t his first time doing something like this, I can tell. He’s definitely killed someone before, maybe even more than one. I saw how he looked at us before he knocked me out. I don’t even know why we’re still alive.” He kept going on, talking about how he would kill more. I began to get nervous as he kept talking.

“SpearMint,” Luna called, and the guard near the door saluted. “Please get a doctor and tell them to please check this boy, there may be something wrong with him.”

“Right away Princess!” SpearMint replied, before leaving the room to fetch a doctor.

“Let's leave as well, Celestia should almost be done talking to Sombra and convincing him to take your lessons.” She turned to the door and we all made to follow. Doctors rushed in soon after and the teen still kept rambling as we left. Most of it wasn’t making sense anymore, but the last thing that I heard from him before the door shut stuck with me.

“That kid is a fucking demon! He’s got a monster in his head that is just waiting to come out. It’s going to kill you all if you give him more power!”

Chapter 12

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Sombra’s POV

After my talk with the princess, I didn’t need to stay in bed for very long after. The nurses came in and did a final check-up to make sure that I didn’t have any lasting damage. I didn’t have anything terrible besides the stitches that were across my chest and stomach. The Princess left to give me some privacy when I was given my clothes and possessions. When I got them, I nearly panicked when I saw that I was missing some very important things, like my knives and my gun. Though I was relieved that no one saw it to ask me questions, I didn’t know where it was, only where it could be. That being the back alley that the fight had taken place in. I needed to find them before someone else did and accidentally shot themselves. So I made Celestia leave, assuring her I had no troubles changing, and changed my clothes. That left me in the situation that I was in right now as I went to the front desk to check out.

While I was making my way to the front desk, Celestia kept talking to me, telling me that my magic was something that many have wanted to learn and that I could answer so many unanswered questions. I didn’t know how to feel about her, I had barely met her less than an hour ago, and yet she already wanted me to be her little project. Though I was interested in learning about my new magic, I wasn’t sure about signing my life away to a ruler of a country. I’ve worked with plenty of their kind and the ones who hired a mercenary to deal with whatever they were having problems with usually weren’t the good kind. They would usually try to force me to work under their service or betray me to get out of paying me. Most learned that I wasn’t that easy to kill and ended up paying me, others paid blood. So yeah, I wasn’t that sure about being a part of Celestia’s little project.

“I’m not sure about this Princess,” I said, walking down the suddenly open hall. The nurses and doctors had given us a large girth as we walked to the main lobby. Well, they gave Celestia a large girth, but I was close enough to enjoy the space I was given. “All this talk makes it sound like you want me to be your experiment.”

“What do you mean by my experiment?” She questioned, looking offended as she spoke. “You will never be experimented on, we only wish to make observations with your magic. Yes, we might ask you to experiment with some speculations of Umbral magic, but you are allowed to refuse.”

My eye twitched as she explained the definition of experiment, but I sighed “Let’s say that I was to go through with your exper-” she glared at me “test.” the glare disappeared. “What can you give me that will make this worth my time?”

She blinked. “Excuse me?”

“What will you give me that will make me want to do this?” I repeated, turning a corner and following the signs. “You don’t expect me to just go along with all these tests and not get something in return, do you?”

She blinked again, before regaining her composure. “I shouldn’t have to offer you anything Sombra, I am offering you a chance to study magic with one of my pupils. Most would see that as payment enough.”

“I don’t see that as payment at all.” Her eyes narrowed. “I’ve lived my entire life without magic and I got by just fine. Sure there might have been a few situations where it could have helped, but I don’t need it. I’ll just walk away from this and my life won't be any different. I’ll be the same guy that I was yesterday before I found out about my magic.”

“Do you truly think it is that simple Sombra?” She asked her tone patient but strained. She wasn’t used to being challenged like this, most people just agreeing with what she wanted. Another thing I got used to with royalty, though Celestia was already doing better than most by holding her frustration. “Magic is not something that can just be ignored, it is a part of you, Sombra, and if not properly handled, it could cause damage to more than just you. Others can and will be affected should you be ignored.”

“How do you know that will happen, princess?”

“You only just found out about magic and you already think that you’re unique Sombra.” By this point, we had completely stopped walking, too engrossed by our talk to do both at once. “I’ve lived for thousands of years and with these years came to the experience, Sombra. Let me tell you that you will lose control, Sombra, just like last night. Magic is linked to emotions, Sombra, lose control of any of them and you will have a situation like last night.”

“I am in complete control of myself, Celestia.” At that, she only raised her brow. It almost made my face flush with the way I had responded. I had no real idea of how this magic worked, and I had been in control of myself when I was in my later years. I once again thought about the downsides of this young body. But I stood my ground and stared back at her.

“Really now?” she said in exasperation. “In complete control you say?”

“Yes,” I confirmed, before continuing my walk to the front desk. I heard her sigh before I heard her catching up to me. I honestly just wanted to try to get away from her at this point. She was trying so hard to get my permission for their experiments, giving me a bad feeling.

“Tell me Sombra, What makes you think that you are in complete control of yourself?” she inquired.

“Because I needed to be if I wanted to survive.” I didn’t even need to think about it, as it wasn’t even a lie. When you are living in the streets, you can’t just lose control. The moment that you did, you were dead. You can’t cry when the bigger kids take your food from you, you need to get off your ass and look for more, otherwise, you weren’t eating. You can't be surprised when someone you buy from sells you out to a gang, otherwise, you won't make it out alive. My entire life I had to try to keep myself in control. I wasn’t perfect, last night proving that, but who was in life.

My response seemed to make her pause, her eyes showing concern for what I just said. I just kept walking, the front desk was not too far from me and I just wanted to leave as soon as I could. I rounded a corner and found a set of stairs, Celestia caught up to me once again and stayed silent. We stayed like that until we reached the bottom floor, I enjoyed the quiet, thinking that I finally got through to her that I wasn’t comfortable with this.

“Sombra.” Nevermind. “I know that you explained your life to us in your room and it sounds like you had a hard life. I won't say something like I understand what your going through or try to relate to you, because I don’t.”

“Well, at least you're smart enough to do that much.” I grumbled, but she kept going.

“But you don’t have to continue that life just because it’s the only one you know.” That got me to pause, both in my steps and my words. “The nurse told me about all of your scars, it's more than what anyone twice your age should have and speaks more stories than words ever could.”

I guess there’s no such thing as doctor-patient confidentiality here.

“You don’t have to do the tests Sombra, neither I nor Luna will force you, but at least let us help you. If you don't want to be observed, then at least be taught, we will pay you for any observation of your magic that you want to spare.”

I looked at her once again, seeing if she was telling the truth. She looked like she did want to help what she thought was a child in her eyes. A child that was about to take a path that wouldn’t end well. It might have been this world affecting me, but I wanted to believe her. I was on the verge of completely trusting her with my body, but the experience from years of contracts and jobs just would let her have it.

“I want more than just money.” She perked up at my word. “As you can probably tell, I’m traveling and don’t have much to my name besides what on my person.” I spread my arms and gestured to my clothes, she nodded. “I want a place to live, it doesn’t need to be anything big or grand, but I want a house.”

“That may be a problem Sombra.” She winced, I gestured for her to go on. “While getting you a house wouldn’t be hard for me to do, there are other complications.”

“Like what?”

“Well for one, judging from your appearance, I would guess that you’re somewhere around fifteen years old.” I nodded, though I wasn’t sure if she was right, even back on earth I was never sure how old I was. “In Equestria, you can live alone as young as sixteen, though it would need to be approved by that area’s court. That process can take quite some time, about six months. Even if I were to interfere with that process and move you up the list. There is still the second issue that we have to worry about. You’re not an Equestrian citizen Sombra.”

“You guys have citizenship here?” I asked before I could stop myself, this world just kept surprising me more and more. Celestia tilted her head at my question.

“Of course, why wouldn’t we.”

“Nevermind that,” I said, waving away Celestia’s question. “How can I become a citizen?”

“Well before we can talk about that, first you will need a place to stay,” she explained as we turned another corner. I saw the exit for the patient area was up ahead, and quickly made my way towards it. “And with that place, you will need a guardian to take care of you as well as help you become a citizen.”

“I need a guardian?” she nodded her head. “Damn, this just got a lot more complicated.” I groaned. Once again, Celestia nodded as we passed through the door. As we passed through, I spotted the front desk and a man who was talking animately to the clerk. I didn’t really hear what he had to say, but he left a note and quickly walked out the hospital exit. I didn’t really give it much thought. The clerk saw us approaching and immediately stiffened at the sight of Celestia.

“P-Princess.” The clerked greeted, unsure if she should give a bow or she should stand straight. Luckily for her, the princess saved her the trouble of deciding between the two.

“Hello dear.” Celestia greeted, giving the clerk a smile that seemed all too natural. “How are you today?”

“I’m good Princess, thank you for asking.” The clerk looked at me and gave me a small greeting in a smile. “Is there anything that I can help you two with today?”

“Yes, I’m going to be checking out of this hospital,” I explained, before realizing that I would probably be charged for everything that they did to me. That was going to be a problem, seeing as I have every last bit of the gems that I stole to Mrs. Cake.

“I’m suddenly wishing that I wasn’t a hero last night,” I remembered the prices that some hospitals would give after treating you. And let me tell you, I was better off learning how to do my own stitched and healing myself. Hospitals could have some of the kindest doctors that will give you everything they got to save your life, but when that bill came, they were no better than the devil. I remember when I asked for a receipt of all the things they charged me for, I found out that they charged me just for bringing me to the operating room from the waiting room.

“Oh okay, can you please tell me your room number?” I did as she asked, thanking my past self for having the foresight to look at the room before he left. “Okay Angelus, so at this point, we would usually give you a bill to pay for all the hospital did for you.” I wanted to roll my eyes, but the clerk didn’t deserve such disrespect. Celestia opened her mouth to say something, but the clerk continued before she could speak.“But you’re in luck, someone has already paid your bill.”

“Really?” Celestia asked and my eyes widened.

“Yes.” The nurse replied, reaching out and giving me a piece of paper. “I was going to ask nurse Red Heart if she could deliver this to your room, but since you’re here, It will save us the trouble.”

“What is this?” I asked, taking the paper and squinting my eyes as I looked at the nearly illegible writing. It was in cursive, but the words were so close together and were obviously written in a hurry.

“It’s a note from the man who paid your bills, his name is Filthy Rich.” I resisted the urge to smack my face. “He’s the father of the girl that came along with you, I believe her name was Diamond Tiara.”

“Is she still at the hospital? Diamond Tiara I mean?” I asked though I had a feeling that I already knew the answer. And the clerk only confirmed it when she shook her head.

“I’m sorry, but she left earlier with her mother. But if you want to see her, you might find her at her father’s shop. I believe he writes that down on that note that he gave you.” I flipped the paper around and showed her the glorified chicken scratch. “Oh my, he has bad cursive, that’s a surprise.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because his normal handwriting is very good.” She answered, and I sighed.

“Fucking rich people and their weird habits.”

“Well, if you want to meet up with him, Mr. Rich is usually at his shop.” She took on a thoughtful expression for a moment. “I think it’s call Barnyard Bargains, it’s a general store on the east side of Ponyvile. He really wants to thank you, but he couldn’t find time in his schedule to give you a proper one. He only had time to deliver this note because he was making a deal around the area.”

“I see, well that’s too bad,” I said, though I wasn’t entirely genuine with those words. I had honestly felt like I needed a break with the interactions. Though with the way things have been going this entire time, something tells me that I wasn’t going to get that bre-

“Princess! Sombra!”

“I knew it.”

“Why, hello girls.” Celestia greeted, I rolled my neck, getting ready for the continued interaction.

“Hello,” I said dryly, if anyone noticed the tone, they didn’t show it. “Where’s the other princess, Luna?”

“She said that she would go back to the castle first.” Twilight explained, I noticed that she was holding onto a book. It was an old-looking book that looked like it could use a duster. “Though this matter is important, she also has her royal duties at night, so she said that she would go back and get some rest.”

“I see.” Celestia nodded. “That makes sense, she hasn’t gotten any sleep since yesterday.”

“So Angelus?” Pinkie said before the awkward silence could kick in. “Are you ready for your tour of Ponyvile?”

I paused at that. “We’re still doing that?”

“Well of course silly.” She playfully knocked a knuckle to my head. “Don’t tell me that you plan to go back on that.”

“Well, I sorta thought that me having stitches and barely leaving the hospital would at least postpone it.”

“Do you need to have a few days?” Fluttershy asked, the concern in her soft voice nearly made my heart melt.

“No.” I sighed, taking in a deep breath and shaking out the stiffness in my body. “I’ve been through worse. I’ll just need a minute to limber up.”

Once again, that wasn’t the right thing to say, as the girls gave each other concerned glances as I stretched out my body. Even Celestia winced at that one.

“I got to get better at this whole socializing thing if I’m going to be here.” It really wasn’t my fault that socializing wasn’t my strong suit. Okay maybe it was, but I had a good reason, the mercenary life didn’t leave a lot of room for making friends. Sure, you probably had associates, or people you could call to help you with a job, but you didn’t have friends. Although, my teacher did have a sociable personality that most mercenaries, making conversations with the people he bought from and getting to know them. I never bothered to ask why he did that, as he would usually answer with some cryptic ‘Figure it out yourself’ bullcrap, so I didn’t even bother.

“Are you ready to head out Angelus?” AppleJack asked, and I nodded.

“Yep, I’m ready to go.” I followed the girls outside, with the princess walking beside me. When we got out the door, Celestia tapped on my shoulder.

“I need to go back to Canterlot Angelus, but I do hope that we can further discuss our deal later.”

“Yeah, I can do it later, something tells me that I won’t be very busy anytime soon.”

“Excellent, I will message Twilight to let you know when I can meet you. In the meantime, please start taking magic lessons. Twilight will be the one to help you, and anything that you wish to share with us can be sent through Spike.”

“Got it,” I said, not at all surprised at the fact that Twilight would be my teacher. Celestia pretty much exposed it when she said that my teacher would be one of her students. “I hope to see you soon Princess.”

“As do I Angelus.” After that, she gave everyone her goodbyes and with a flash of light, she completely disappeared.

“Alright, even I have to admit that that was cool.” With Celestia gone, I walked up to the girls and walked towards that town that would soon become a temporary home.

Chapter 13

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Ponyvile, as it turned out, had a lot more to offer than food, sweets, and books. The town was packed full of stores that all seemed busy. Granted, I hadn’t really had a chance to explore the city before now. Between finding shelter the first day and waking up in the hospital today, I couldn’t really say that I had too much time to explore. But now that I finally had the time to do something, the women that surrounded me took it upon themselves to show me around the town. If I was being honest, I enjoyed the walk, it was a warm day that had a slight breeze running through, the people were talking, the stalls were busy, and the air had the faint scent of ozone that followed from yesterday’s rain. And though I was reluctant about it at first, the company wasn’t too bad either.

After we had taken off from the hospital, the girls would all take turns telling me about the town as we went through, none of them afraid to tell me their favorite stores or where not to buy what. Especially Rarity, apparently I should never buy fabric scissors from Velvet Date, they have a tendency to never cut straight for long. For two hours, we went like that, learning where many shops were and walking through the town. Sometimes the girls would ask me a question, nothing too personal, it was mundane stuff. How old I was, what my favorite food was, and if I had any favorite books. It was nice to not need to figure out a story for simple questions, I only had to be honest.

“So, Darling, why don’t you tell us where you got that cloak from?” Rarity asked, pointing down to the cloak that was wrapped around my waist. Reaching to it, she took it between two fingers and rubbed, feeling the fabric. “It looks quite old and frankly, almost ready to be replaced.”

“Really?” I asked, taking the cloak off my waist and unfurling it. It looked the same as it did yesterday. That is to say, dirty, but not too dirty. “It doesn’t look bad, maybe it needs a clean, but that’s it.”

“Sweety, there are rips and tears everywhere. That’s not to mention the stains.” Rarity explained, standing next to me and taking the cloak to stretch it. The others took that as a cue to gather around and look at it.

“Oh my,” Fluttershy said, putting a hand to her mouth and looking at it, and once again, the others took that as a cue to agree. If I didn’t know any better, I’d have thought they were linked in thoughts.

“I’m seein’ three stains on my side alone,” Apple Jack said, pointing out each of them. “This one is dirt, grass, and… is this one blood?”

At those words, Rarity gave a slight shriek and tossed it back to me. I caught it and went back to wrap it around my waist.

“As I said, it only needs a cleaning.”

“Why is it so important to you Sombra?” This time Spike asked the question. Turning to him, I saw that he was eyeing it as well. The question could have sounded mocking, but from him, it was just an innocent question. “I’m sure that rarity could replace it when you go in for a new set of clothes

“Well… I don’t want to replace it, Spike.”

“But why, Angelus? I know I can make you a better one.” Rarity, still looking at the cloak, followed. “I may focus on fashion, but I can also make a cloak that can function. Do you want to be warm? I can line it with fleece. Do you want it to last in the rain? I’ll make one with latex.” Rarity continued to go on and on about how she could make a better cloak. And they all did sound nice, but it just didn’t sound right. Not to mention that her attitude was starting to get on my nerves.

“I don’t want to replace it,” I started, feeling some heat enter my voice. “Because it was a gift from my grandpa.” The group went quiet after that, realizing what I said, I took a deep breath and made warped my cloak around my waist. “It was one of the few things that I have left from him.” I gave Rarity a glare. “And while it is dirty, old, torn, and all sorts of bad things. I don’t appreciate how you disregard my things, whether they’re significant or not.”

“D-Dear, I wasn’t saying anything bad about it.” Rarity stuttered, trying to recover from all that she said. “I was just saying that maybe it was time to replace it. You know, I didn’t know I was so important to you, but you know, it was just so dirty that I thought I had to-”

She tried to say more, but Rainbow Dash cut her off with a hand to her mouth. It was a good thing that she did, the more that she spoke, the more I felt my irritation rising. But I forced myself to stay quiet, she was young and beautiful. She probably didn’t put too much thought into what might hurt people, and probably wasn’t used to people pointing the insult if they did. After all, you didn’t want to get on the bad side of the person that was making anything for you, or a person that was pretty enough to put most women on earth to shame, that was an unspoken rule.

“I’m sure that she didn’t mean to insult it, Angelus,” Twilight said, trying to calm what she thought was going to be a teenager’s rage. “She doesn’t put too much thought into what she says when it comes to clothes.”

Rarity gave a squawk past Rainbow’s hand, but she made no move to remove it. I sighed, letting my anger settle and finishing my cloak.

“It’s fine,” I said curtly, walking forward to the rest of the town. The rest followed and they continued to show me the town, Pinkie decided that she had been quiet for long enough and started to run her mouth about the shops we went by.

“Over there is Sadie Saddles, she makes saddles for those who need them for their horses. Oh and over there is Archie’s Quiver, run by Archie he is the go-to man for the hunters in town. And we can forget about-”

Angelus tried to follow her words, looking in every direction that she pointed to, but once we got to the end of the road, we ended up in the middle of the Ponyvile. In the middle was a large circular building, with multiple windows and a large balcony that circled the entire second floor.

“Let me guess, it’s the city hall,” Angelus said, interrupting Pinkie just as she was about to speak.

“Yep, this is where most people go when they want to know more about the city or talk to the mayor. It has a map that was updated last year.” Pinkie confirmed, bouncing on the balls of her feet.

“Maps huh.” I put a hand to my chin and looked at the doors of the building. There was a line for some reason, it only had five people “Maybe I should go get a map, just in case I get lost.”

“Oh you don’t have to do that darling,” Rarity chimed in. “I’ll go get one for you, you can just wait over by those benches over there.” Pointing to our left, I followed and saw benches surrounding the building. “Besides, there are still questions that everyone wants to ask, ill just save mine for the end. They aren’t important anyway.”

Without giving me a chance to answer, she walked off to the line of people, and the group dragged me off. I looked around and saw the gazes of men around the girl's age, they seemed to be envious. I could only gaze enviously at them, wishing to fulfill their wish of being in my place. Let them see how ‘wonderful’ this experience was. But they were young and didn’t realize that most activities that involved a group of girls would leave you more drained than fulfilled.

When we had finally reached the bench, I immediately prepped myself to be bombarded with questions. All trying to connect me with this Shadow Mage, but surprisingly, when the first question came, it wasn’t even related to that.

“So Angelus, about you and your grandfather, why don’t you tell us about him?” it was Twilight that asked it, I raised a brow at that. I thought that she was going to be the first to ask a question, but nothing related to that.

“What do you want to know?” I asked, it sounded curt and it had suspicion in it, but I didn’t want to give up more than what they wanted to know.

“Well how about how you met him?” Fluttershy said nods and sounds of agreement followed. “You said that you were picked up by him, right? Surely he was a kind man to do that to someone he didn’t know.” I leaned back on the bench, remembering that day like it was yesterday, and I laughed.

“Are you sure that you want to know that? It’s not exactly the greatest story.” I chuckled, and everyone looked confused. How could something that wasn’t a great story be linked with the way I was laughing? But none of them had objected, so I shrugged and started talking. “You see, the first time that I met the old man, he snapped my wrist like a twig.”

“What?!” AppleJack screamed, both confused and angry at what he just said. “He broke your wrist when you met him? Why would he do that ?”

“Well you see AJ, I wasn’t really a good kid growing up on the streets. After I was kicked out of the orphanage, I didn’t really have too many options on what to do. So I would steal any food that I could, eat any trash that was edible, and fight any street rats that came trying to steal from my stash.” they all had looks of horror and shock on their faces as I told my story, seeming to not believe a word that I was saying. And I couldn’t blame them, it was a little hard to tell these stories, but it was my life. “But you see, when you do something like that often, the others would get smart and gang up on me and take the food for themselves. So I had to resort to other methods of getting food. The only idea at the time that came to me was robbing people.”

“Why?” Rainbow Dash asked. “Why was that your next option? That’s the last thing that anyone should do, especially a kid.”

“Yeah.” I sighed, leaning back on the bench. “It was my last option.”

“You really had to do all that Angelus? Eat out of the trash and fight people?” Spike looked sad as he asked that. Like he just realized that not everyone started out so well. He probably didn’t realize it, I haven’t seen a single homeless walking around since I got to this town. I probably spoke of how good this world was that people made enough money around here to not worry about housing. But then again, this was only a smaller town.

“Yeah, I did Spike, but that stopped after I met the old man.” I smiled as I remembered his face. “I remember I was following him in a shady part of town. It was probably my fourth or fifth time doing this, so I wanted to lead him away from a crowd. So I went behind him with my knife, nothing more than a long rusted nail, and told him to go to an ally. He did what I said and I told him to give me all his money and whatever he had. Only, I really didn’t get that far.”

“What happened,” Pinkie asked, she was eating a bowl of popcorn that she pulled from…somewhere. I stopped questioning it and reached over for a handful. It was salted and buttered.

“Well, he turned around and broke my wrist,” I said around a mouthful of popcorn. “Told me that if I was going to rob someone, I’d have to pick my targets better. The best advice I was given.”

“You took that as advice?” AppleJack deadpanned. “It sounds more like a threat.”

“Well I took it as advice because he didn’t kill me, he just gave me some money and left.”

“Wait so he didn’t pick you up right there?” Rainbow interrupted.

“Yeah, why would he pick up a kid he just met?”

“But what was he even doing there in the first place if it wasn’t to pick you up,” Twilight asked, and that was where things started to get tricky. I couldn’t say what he was really doing there, it would put me through more trouble than it was worth.

“He was there doing a job, if I remember right, he was trying to find a man's daughter and bring her back to him,” I explained, and it wasn’t too far from the truth, he really was trying a find the daughter of a man. The thing was that he was hired to drag that daughter back to her father for stealing twenty million dollars and running off with his business rival's son. It was the classic Romeo and Juliet story. He caught them trying to escape to Belize of all places.“He finished the job before even considering coming back for me. When he did, said that he wanted to apologize for breaking my wrist and took me out to eat. One thing lead to another and then I started to travel with him.

“So what does he do, is a hunter like you, except for people?” Spike asked, and I shook my head.

“That a bounty hunter and no I wouldn’t call it that, he could do that, but he did more.” I scratch my head as I tried to think of the right word. “He did odd jobs.”

“What's that?” Spike asked, I made to answer, but surprisingly, Twilight beat me to the punch.

“Well, they are usually jobs that don’t last long and don’t really pay well.” She then looked to Angelus. “And they usually have to do with repairing and cleaning.”

“Yep, that's what it is.” I left it off at that, reaching towards Pinkie and getting an extra handful. I stayed quiet as I enjoyed the treat, but it seems Twilight wasn’t done talking.

“Angelus, does that sound like an odd job to you?”

“Well, he did a little of everything.” I shrugged. “Needed a wheel fixed? He was there. Got locked out of your house? Boom, he opened it fast then you could with your key. Need to find someone that went missing? He’ll have them back before dinner.” I could go on and on about his own advertisement, but I think the girls got the point. “There really just wasn’t a job that he wouldn’t deny.”

“So he was a handyman, a bounty hunter, and a cleaner?” Rainbow asked, uncertainty in her voice.

“Among many things yes.”

“Alright, you know what, I’m changing the question?” AppleJack blurted out. “If this keeps going on, I feel like we’ll never hear the end of it.”

“That's fine with me.”

“How did you end up here?” She questioned, a serious look in her eyes.

“Oh, that’s a good one?” Pinkie said, pointing to AppleJack and nodding vigorously. Another question that I expected, and once I didn’t really have a good answer for. How do you tell someone that you teleported into a lake?

“Actually, that probably could work.” I was in a world full of magic and spells after all. But what would I say for who caused it. I had a good idea, but again, actually revealing who it could be was a bad idea. So I threw that one out the window and decided to just tell the truth.

“I was lost,” I said simply. I got varied reactions from the girls. Disbelief, confusion, some anger, but mostly the former.

“You were lost,” Twilight said slowly. “You somehow managed to stumble into a forest, walk Celestia know how far, find and save the kids, and then manage to find Ponyvile?”

“Well not like that exactly.” I hunched forward, trying to think of something that wouldn’t sound too farfetched, yet too difficult to confirm. “Well as I said, my grandpa did odd jobs the entire time that I was with him. So growing up, I kinda didn’t have much in the way of proper education. So I took up after him, I did jobs that people would pay me for.”

“Ok, we can understand that, but what does that have to do with you getting lost in the forest,” Rainbow asked, walking over and standing on my left, crossing her arms. “Most people around the forest are smart enough to go nowhere near the forest without a plan. And those who aren’t don’t last five minutes before running back out.”

“Well, I wasn’t smart enough,” I said simply, the others stayed silent, waiting for me to explain further. “I went to the forest for a job. I was only told to search the area on a map around a certain area of the forest for gems to study with a small group. Apparently, there is supposed to be an area that can create very fine gems.”

“And you just accepted it? No questions asked?” AJ asked, walking behind me and leaning on the bench I was in. I didn’t know if she was doing it on purpose, but with the way that AJ and Rainbow Dash were positioned, they gave off the feeling that they were trying to trap me. It didn’t help that the others added to it by standing in front of me. Made me wonder if they’ve done this before.

“Well, I wasn’t exactly in the best position to ask questions,” I explained.

“How were you not in the best position to not ask questions, Angelus? Do you even know the place where you got the job?” I shook my head, not even thinking of testing my luck with that. “I would like to think you’re smarter than that.” Twilight sighed, it kinda irked me that she spoke to me like that, but I imagined that it was coming from a kind place. Like a sister scolding her brother that what they did was wrong. So I didn’t even try to challenge it.

“Doesn’t matter how smart you are if you’re hungry.” I chucked humorously like I just told a joke.

“What?” Twilight gaped

“When they approached me to take up that job I was starving and elbow deep in a garbage can trying to find my next meal,” I explained, looking at the building and seeing that Rarity had entered and was going to be done soon. I only had to try and make it a little longer. “They offered me food up front and money later, so long as I did what they asked. I was too desperate to even think twice at the thought of a good meal so I said yes.”

I liked what I had going so far. It was starting to explain a lot of things, such as the gems that I had on me, how I ended up in the forest, why I didn’t ask questions, and some more. It didn’t have much truth in it, but all you needed was a kernel of truth to make a lie believable. And no one knows where I really got the gems from, only that I had them and gave them away. As long as that diamond dog I stole from doesn’t ask questions I should be good.

The group stayed silent after that, not yet sure what to ask yet, and I didn’t want to talk without being asked a question. So for an awkward two minutes, we didn’t say anything. The one who broke the silence was Rarity, holding the map up as she won it as a prize. Confused as to why everyone looked so down. I stood up and grabbed the map, thanking her when she handed it to me, and opened it. I felt a hand on my shoulder and looked up, it was Apple Jack.

“Hey sugar cube.” she gestured over her shoulder. “Why don’t we get something to eat.” not even one second after the mention of food did my stomach growl like a starving beast. I remembered that I haven’t eaten anything since those chocolate muffins that Mrs. Cake made. Looking at the others, they all had thoughtful expressions on their faces, and somehow, Pinkie’s hair seemed to deflate slightly. Looking back at Apple Jack, she looked a little hopeful when she asked me.

“Sure AJ.” I folded the map and put it in my back pocket. “I would love something to eat right now.”

The Shadow of Sombra

by Lupus_Umbra

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13